Kummer quartic double solids (Q6159166)

Kummer quartic surfaces are those irreducible normal quartic surfaces in \(\mathbb P^3\) with 16 ordinary double points (the maximal number of singular points). Such a quartic surface \(\mathcal S\) is the Kummer variety of the Jacobian surface of a smooth genus \(2\) curve \(\mathcal C\). There is a rich correspondence between the surface \(\mathcal S\) and the hyperelliptic curve \(\mathcal C\). In particular, the group of automorphisms of \(\mathbb P^3\) leaving \(\mathcal S\) invariant, \(\mathrm{Aut} (\mathbb P^3, \mathcal S)\), can be expressed in terms of the quotient of the automorphism group of \(\mathcal C\) by the hyperelliptic involution. The main focus of the article are Kummer quartic double solids. These are double covers \(\pi \colon X\to \mathbb P^3\) branched along a Kummer quartic surface \(\mathcal S\), and they are del Pezzo threefolds of degree \(2\). The main result of the paper states optimal conditions under which \(X\) is \(G\)-birationally super-rigid, where \(G\) is a subgroup of \(\mathrm{Aut} (X)\). The paper provides methods to check geometrically whether these conditions hold, and constructs \(G\)-Sarkisov links violating birational super-rigid when they are not. The article presents a large number of examples and explores their birational geometry in detail.