No label defined (Q4249717)

This article is a preliminary report on a study of L-series of some Calabi-Yau threefolds. In his former paper [see \textit{H. A. Verrill}, J. Math. Kyoto Univ. 36, No. 2, 423-446 (1996; Zbl 0895.14010)], the author studied varieties arising from root lattices. For some special root lattices \(R\), one can obtain in this way pencils of Calabi-Yau varieties, and can also make the ambient space into a Calabi-Yau variety \({\mathcal Z}_R\). Since the equations defining the varieties as above have integer coefficients, one can ask for the integer solutions of these equations, which in turn leads to the problem to determine the L-series of such pencils. In section 2 this problem is solved in the case \(R= A_1 \times A_1 \times A_1\) which can be related to a pencil \(X_{A_1^3}\) of K3 surfaces studied by \textit{C. Peters} and \textit{J. Stienstra} [in: Arithmetic of complex manifolds, Proc. Conf., Erlangen 1988, Lect. Notes Math. 1399, 110-127 (1989; Zbl 0701.14037)]. In section 3 is studied the more complicated case \(R = A_3\). In 3.1 and 3.2 are described two geometric constructions of \({\mathcal Z}_{A_3}\), which in particular shows that \({\mathcal Z}_{A_3}\) is a fibration of K3 surfaces over \({\mathbb P}^1\). The L-series of \({\mathcal Z}_{A_3}\) is expected to be a modular form of weight 4, and the study in 3.3 gives a strong evidence that it should be equal to \(({\eta}({\tau}){\eta}(2{\tau}){\eta}(3{\tau}){\eta}(6{\tau}))^2\), where \({\eta}\) is the Dedekind eta-function. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0910.00037].