A new family of surfaces of general type with \(K^2 = 7\) and \(p_g = 0\) (Q2435088)

The present paper shows the existence of a hitherto unknown family of minimal surfaces of general type satisfying \(p_g=0\) and \(K^2=7\). This is the first example of surfaces with such invariants having a birational bicanonical morphism. In [\textit{M. Mendes Lopes} and \textit{R. Pardini}, Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 33, No. 3, 265--274 (2001; Zbl 1075.14514)] it is proven that the maximum degree of the bicanonical morphism for these surfaces is 2 but no examples with degree 1 bicanonical morphism were yet known. The present new examples are constructed as ingenious \(\mathbb Z_2^2\)-covers of week Del Pezzo surfaces of degree 1 and the bulk of the paper is the construction of these covers and the analysis showing that the bicanonical map is birational and that the canonical divisor is ample. In addition it is proven that this new family satisfies Bloch's conjecture. The paper concludes with an interesting discussion on some other already known examples of surfaces with the above invariants.