Canonical double covers of minimal rational surfaces and the non-existence of carpets (Q351426)

In several cases there is a relation among the deformation theory of double covers of a variety embedded in a projective space (and namely the existence of small deformations which are embeddings), and the existence of certain double structures on it, see e.g [\textit{L.-Y. Fong}, J. Algebr. Geom. 2, No. 2, 295--307 (1993; Zbl 0788.14027)]. In the paper under review, the authors give some more evidence of this relation. Namely, they study canonical double covers of the projective plane or of an Hirzebruch surface, embedded by a complete linear system, showing that all their deformations preserve the canonical involution, and therefore the double covers do not have any small deformation whose canonical map is an embedding. On the other hand, they show that the mentioned rational surfaces do not have any canonically embedded double structure.