Hasse-Witt matrices and mirror toric pencils (Q6186488)

This article describes a relationship between Picard-Fuchs equations and the Hasse-Witt matrices of Calabi-Yau varieties (i.e., \(K3\) surfaces) realized as toric hypersurfaces. Given a reflexive polytope \(\Delta\), a pencil of Calabi-Yau varieties called the vertex pencil is defined. Two combinatorially equivalent polytopes are said to be a kernel pair if the matrices given by their vertices have the same kernel. A pair of polytopes which are both polar dual and a kernel pair is called a mirror kernel pair. The first lemma is that vertex pencils corresponding to a kernel pair of polytopes have the same Hasse-Witt matrices, and as a corollary, they have the same number of rational points modulo \(p\) (prime). The main theorem is to obtain mirror kernel pairs of three-dimensional reflexive polytopes. Theorem: There are \(32\) mirror kernel piars of three-dimensional reflextive polytopes, of which \(6\) are self-dual. The mirror kernel pairs are divided into \(16\) types with a common kernel; each type is associated to vertex pencils with common Picard-Fuchs equations. Four of these types correspond to vertex pencils of \(K3\) surfaces with general Picard number \(19\) over \(\mathbf{C}\). If \(\Delta\) is a reflextive polytope of one of these four types, the Hasse-Witt invariant is a trancated hypergeometric series \(_3F_2\) modulo \(p\). \smallskip