Counting Zariski chambers on del Pezzo surfaces (Q984995)

As proven by the first author with \textit{A. Küronya} and \textit{T. Szemberg} [J. Reine Angew.\ Math.\ 576, 209--233 (2004; Zbl 1055.14007)] the big cone of a smooth projective surface \(X\) admits a natural decomposition into rational locally polyhedral subcones, named Zariski chambers, encoding relevant properties of big linear series on \(X\). The number \(z(X)\) of the Zariski chambers of \(X\) is an interesting invariant measuring how complicated \(X\) is from the point of view of linear series. For instance \(z(X)=1\) if \(X\) does not contain negative curves (i.e., irreducible curves with negative self-intersection), but \(z(X)=\infty\) if \(X\) contains infinitely many negative curves. In the paper under review the authors provide an algorithm allowing to compute \(z(X)\) whenever the negative curves on \(X\) are known explicitly. The crucial fact is that if \(X\) contains only finitely many negative curves then \(z(X)-1\) is equal to the number of negative definite principal submatrices of the intersection matrix of the negative curves on \(X\). This number, however, is difficult to be computed in practice and the algorithm presented by the authors reduces the complexity of this computation. In particular, they apply this algorithm to determine \(z(X_r)\) for any del Pezzo surface \(X_r\) obtained by blowing-up \(\mathbb P^2\) at \(r\) general points.