Classification of fiber surfaces of genus 2 with automorphisms acting trivially in cohomology (Q952985)

The paper under review concerns surfaces of general type with a nontrivial subgroup \(G\subset \text{Aut}(S)\) acting trivially on \(H^2(S,\mathbb Q)\). In particular, the author focuses on those surfaces with a relatively minimal fibration of genus 2 and \(\chi(\mathcal O_S)\geq 5\). In this case we have \(| G| =2\) and an easy computation of \(K_S^2\). Such surfaces are birationally equivalent to double covers of an elliptic fibre bundle and the ramification divisor of the covering is explicitly computed. If moreover the condition \(K_S^2=8\chi(\mathcal O_S)\) holds, \(S\) is equivalent to a product of curves \((F\times C)/\widetilde G\) where \(g(F)=2\), \(g(C)\geq 2\) and \(\widetilde G\) is either cyclic with order at most 10, or \((\mathbb Z/2\mathbb Z)^2\) or \(D_8\) or \(\mathbb Z/6\mathbb Z\times \mathbb Z/2\mathbb Z\). In this cases a description of the action is given. As a consequence of the above results, it is shown that there exists a family of surfaces of general type \(S_n\) with an involution acting trivially on \(H^i(S_n,\mathbb Z)\) for all \(i\).