On the Néron-Severi lattice of a Delsarte surface (Q318164)

The Néron-Severi group is one of the most fundamental invariants of an algebraic surface, yet it is a notoriously difficult to compute. A notable exception consists in Fermat surfaces (due to [\textit{T. Shioda}, J. Fac. Sci., Univ. Tokyo, Sect. I A 28, 725--734 (1981; Zbl 0567.14021)] over the complex numbers, but later generalized to arbitrary characteristic). Subsequently this was extended to Delsarte surfaces, i.e. irreducible hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb P^3\) given by a four-term polynomial, in [\textit{T. Shioda}, Am. J. Math. 108, 415--432 (1986; Zbl 0602.14033)]. Despite this progress, little is known about the precise underlying lattice structure, as already determining explicit generators for the full Néron-Severi group remains a non-trivial task (cf.~[\textit{N. Aoki} and \textit{T. Shioda}, Prog. Math. 35, 1--12 (1983; Zbl 0586.14028)], [\textit{M. Schütt} et al., J. Number Theory 130, No. 9, 1939--1963 (2010; Zbl 1194.14057)], [\textit{A. Degtyarev}, J. Number Theory 147, 454--477 (2015; Zbl 1370.14032)]). The present paper accomplishes this for certain classes of Fermat and Delsarte surfaces by homological methods based on the Alexander module related to a certain suitable covering. It also include a few examples, both illustrating where the methods give sharp results and were they fail to do so.