Automorphisms of open surfaces with irreducible boundary (Q888451)

Let \(V\) be a smooth quasi-projective surface and the log pair \((S, B_S)\) be the dlt completion of \(V\) such that \(S\) is a projective completion of \(V\), \(B_S\) is a reduced boundary divisor \(B_S=\sum E_i\) and the support of \(B_S\) is exactly \(S\backslash V\). A strictly birational map of dlt completions is a birational map \(f: (S, B_S)\dashrightarrow (S', B_{S'})\) which is not a biregular isomorphism but induces an isomorphism \(f|_V: S\backslash B_S\rightarrow S'\backslash B_{S'}\). In this paper, the authors proved the following main factorization theorem. Theorem 1. Let \(f: V{\rightarrow} V'\) be an isomorphism of smooth quasi-projective surfaces, and let \(S\), \(S'\) be dlt completions of \(V\) and \(V'\) with irreducible boundary divisors \(B_S\), \(B_{S'}\). If the induced map \(f: S\dashrightarrow S'\) is strictly birational, then \(f\) can be factorized into a finite sequence of \(n\) links of the following form \[ S_{I-1}\leftarrow Z_i\rightarrow S_i \] where \(S_0=S, S_1,\dots , S_n=S' \) are dlt completions of \(V\) with an irreducible boundary, \(Z_i\) is for all \(i=1,\dots, n\) a dlt completion of \(V\) with two boundary components, and \(Z_i\rightarrow S_{i-1}\), \(Z_i\rightarrow S_i\) are the divisorial contractions associated with each one of the two \(K+B\) extremal rays with support in the boundary of \(Z_i\). ``The existence of the above decomposition, which was already considered by the authors in [``Variations on log Sarkisov program for surfaces'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:0802.2441}], is in fact a particular case of more general factorization results developed later on by Y. M. Polyakova.\dots'' The authors also considered applications of the theorem and constructed many examples. For example, if \(V\) is affine, \(S\) is smooth and \(B_S^2=d>0\), then the following holds (1) If \(d\leq 4\), then every automorphism of \(V\) is generalized tame and Aut\((V)={\mathcal{M}}{\text{TA}}(V)\) for a finite family \(\mathcal{M}\) of completions. In particular, Aut\((V)\) is generated by countably many algebraic subgroups. (2) If \(d\geq 5\), then GTA\((V)\) is a proper normal subgroup of Aut\((V)\) and it cannot be generated by countably many algebraic subgroups, where GTA\((V)\) is the subgroup of Aut\((V)\) generated by generalized Jonqui\(\grave{\text{e}}\)res and generalized affine automorphisms.