Nonstability of the AK invariant (Q2571457)

The authors continue their study of AK invariant of surfaces. If \(V\) is an affine variety, \(\text{AK}(V)\) is the subring of the regular functions on \(V\) consisting of all functions annihilated by all locally nilpotent derivations, called the absolute constants. Other authors use the notation \(\text{ML}(S)\) for the same invariant, named after the second author of this paper. Facts and several conjectures dealing with this invariant can be found in the article by the second author [Ann. Pol. Math. 76, No. 1--2, 139--145 (2001; Zbl 0994.13004)]. This invariant for a surface \(S\) is called stable if \(\text{AK}(S\times \mathbb{C})= \text{AK}(S)\). Examples where this does not hold were constructed by the authors, and others and some of them can be found in [\textit{K.-H. Fieseler}, Comment. Math. Helv. 69, No. 1, 5--27 (1994; Zbl 0806.14033)] and [\textit{T. Bandman} and \textit{L. Makar-Limanov}, Jap. J. Math., New Ser. 26, No. 1, 207--217 (2000; Zbl 1031.32017)]. These examples all had \(S\) simply connected. In this paper under review, the authors construct such examples with non-trivial fundamental group.