Irreducible unirational and uniruled components of moduli spaces of polarized Enriques surfaces (Q2686990)

A polarized (resp. numerically polarized) Enriques surface is a pair \((S,H)\) (resp. \((S,[H])\)) made of an Enriques surface \(S\) together with an ample linear (resp. numerical) equivalence class \(H\) (resp. \([H]\)) on it. For integers \(g>1\) and \(\phi>0\) define the moduli space \(\mathcal E_{g,\phi}\) (resp. \(\widehat{\mathcal E}_{g,\phi}\)) of polarized (resp. numerically polarized) Enriques surfaces \((S,H)\) (resp. \((S, [H])\) such that \(H^2=2g-2\) and \(\phi:=\) min\(\{E.H: E\) is a non zero affective divisor satisfying \( E^2=0\}\). There is an étale double cover \(\rho: \mathcal E_{g,\phi}\to\widehat{\mathcal E}_{g,\phi}\) mapping \((S, H)\) and \((S, K_S+H)\) to \((S, [H])\). These spaces are in general reducible and it is an open problem determining their Kodaira dimensions. \textit{V. Gritsenko} and \textit{K. Hulek} [Prog. Math. 315, 55--72 (2016; Zbl 1354.14058)] have shown that the moduli space of numerically polarized Enriques surfaces has infinitely many irreducible components of general type. In the present paper, the authors show that the moduli space of numerically polarized Enriques surfaces has infinitely many irreducible uniruled and unirational components. To prove this first the authors characterize components of the moduli space according to the decompositions of the polarization \(H\) as an effective sum of isotropic classes. Then they use clever and subtle geometric arguments, using the model of a general Enriques surface in \(\mathbb P^3\) as a sextic singular along the edges of a tetrahedron, to show that these components are irreducible and unirational or uniruled. This last proof involves a deep analysis of families of curves and incidence varieties related to Enriques sextics. The description of the components of the moduli space in terms of the isotropic decompositions of the polarization involves long computations of possibilities of decompositions, which in fact can be used as in the appendix appendix describing all the components of \(\widehat{\mathcal E}_{g,\phi}\) and the properties of \(\rho^{-1}\) of these components for \(g\leq 30\). Some of the open questions raised in this paper have been answered in [\textit{A. L. Knutsen}, J. Math. Pures Appl. (9) 144, 106--136 (2020; Zbl 1454.14010)], which complements this paper.