Cubic surfaces and Borcherds products (Q699678)

The moduli space \(\mathcal M\) of marked cubic surfaces can be identified with the Baily-Borel compactification of \(\mathcal B_4 / \Gamma\), where \(\mathcal B_4\) is the 4-ball and \(\Gamma\) is a certain arithmetic reflection group. In this paper the authors apply Borcherds' method of constructing automorphic forms on \(\mathcal B_4\) to embed \(\mathcal M\) into \(\mathbb{C} \mathbb{P}^9\), whose image is the intersection of 270 explicitly known cubic 8-folds. This map is compatible with the respective actions of the Weyl group \(W(E_6)\) on \(\mathcal M\) and \(\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^9\). The action of \(W(E_6)\) on \(\mathbb{C} \mathbb{P}^9\) arises from its unique 10-dimensional representation, and the associated 10-dimensional linear system contains 270 automorphic forms with known zeros. The authors interpret the pairwise ratios of these forms as original invariants of cubic surfaces, the cross ratios introduced by Cayley. They also note that this model of \(\mathcal M\) was found by \textit{A.~B.~Coble} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 18, 331-372 (1916; JFM 46.0890.01)] in an entirely different way.