Cyclic coverings of rational normal surfaces which are quotients of a product of curves (Q6589788)

In the present paper, the authors study the cohomology of cyclic covers of normal projective surfaces ramified along curves. The presented construction of the surfaces uses three cyclic branched covers: \N\[\Nm_{\kappa} : \mathbb{P}^{1} \rightarrow \mathbb{P}^{1}, \quad \tau : G \xrightarrow{\kappa \, : \, 1} \mathbb{P}^{1}, \quad \pi_{F} : F_{(d)} \xrightarrow{d \, : \, 1} \mathbb{P}^{1}.\N\]\NThe covering \(\tau\) can be interpreted as an orbifold map \(\tau : G \rightarrow \mathcal{O}\), where \(\mathcal{O}\) is an orbifold whose underlying manifold is \(\mathbb{P}^{1}\) and has \(r\) orbifold points and \(m_{\kappa}\) acts as \(z \mapsto z^{\kappa}\). One considers a surface \(S\) being a diagonal quotient of \(G \times \mathbb{P}^{1}\) by the action of \(\mathbb{Z} / \kappa\). The main result of the paper tells us how to compute the cohomology of degree \(1\) of the surface \(S_{d}\) being the cyclic covering of \(S\) of degree \(d\) that is determined by the sequence \(G \times F_{(d)} \rightarrow S_{d} \xrightarrow{\pi} S\). More precisely, the authors show the following.\N\NMain Result. Let \(S_{d}\) be the cyclic covering of \(S\) associated with the data \((d,D,H)\), where \(D \in \mathrm{Div}(S)\), \(H \in \mathrm{Cl}(S)\) with \(D \sim dH\), and \(D\) being a \(\mathbb{Q}\)-normal crossing. Then \N\[\NH^{1}(S_{d},\mathcal{O}_{S_{d}}) \cong \mathbb{H}_{h} \oplus \mathbb{H}_{v},\N\]\Nwhere \(\mathbb{H}_{v}\) is the \(1\)-cohomology of the structure sheaf of the restriction of an intermediate cover of \(\pi\) to a rational horizontal fibre, and \(\mathbb{H}_{h}\) is the \(1\)-cohomology of the structure sheaf of the greatest common vertical cover of an intermediate cover.\N\NIn particular, \(H^{1}(S_{d},\mathcal{O}_{S_{d}})\) splits as a direct sum of the cohomology of two cyclic covers of \(\mathbb{P}^{1}\) and the splitting respects the eigenspaces of the monodromy and the Hodge structure.\N\NWe refer to the paper for the definitions of the rational horizontal fibre and the greatest common vertical cover.