A K3 surface is a Calabi-Yau variety of dimension whose Picard variety is zero-dimensional. In other words, it is a complex algebraic surface with trivial canonical bundle () and with .
The term “K3” is
in honor of Kummer, Kähler, Kodaira, and the beautiful K2 mountain in Kashmir
A cyclic cover of branched over a curve of degree .
A nonsingular degree hypersurface in , such as the Fermat quartic? (in fact every K3 surface over is diffeomorphic to this example).
The flat orbifold quotient of the 4-torus (equipped with some complex structure) by the sign involution on all four canonical coordinates is the flat compact 4-dimensional orbifold known as a Kummer surface , a singular K3-surface (e.g. Bettiol, Derdzinski & Piccione 2018, 5.5; Taormina & Wendland 2015, §1)
Over the complex numbers K3 surfaces are all Kähler, and even hyperkähler.
The only known examples of compact hyperkähler manifolds are Hilbert schemes of points (for ) for either
a 4-torus (in which case the compact hyperkähler manifolds is really the fiber of )
(Beauville 83) and two exceptional examples (O’Grady 99, O’Grady 03 ), see Sawon 04, Sec. 5.3.
(e.g. Barth-Peters-Van den Ven 84, VIII Prop. 3.2)
(Betti numbers of a K3-surface)
The Hodge diamond? is completely determined (even in positive characteristic) and hence the Hodge-de Rham spectral sequence degenerates at . This also implies that the Betti numbers are completely determined as :
(e.g. Barth-Peters-Van den Ven 84, VIII Prop. 3.3)
(K3-surface spans SU-bordism ring in degree 4)
The canonical degree-4 generator in the SU-bordism ring (this Prop.) is represented by minus the class of any (non-torus) K3-surface:
(LLP 17, Lemma 1.5, Example 3.1, CLP 19, Theorem 13.5a, see at Calabi-Yau manifolds in SU-bordism theory)
We discuss some characteristic classes of (the tangent bundle of) K3, and their evaluation on (the fundamental class of) (i.e. their integration over ).
For every closed complex manifold the evaluation of the top degree Chern class equals the Euler characteristic. Hence the statement follows from Prop. .
(see also e.g. Duff-Liu-Minasian 95 (5.10))
For a complex manifold the first Pontryagin class is the following polynomial in the first Chern class and the second Chern class. By Prop. the first Chern class vanishes, and by Prop. the second Chern class evaluates to 24:
Now consider the Cartesian product space .
See also at C-field tadpole cancellation the section Integrality on .
By the Whitney sum formula for the Euler class we have . Hence the statement follows by Prop. .
By the general formula for Pontryagin classes of product spaces we have
Now consider the Cartesian product space of K3 with some 4-manifold.
(Euler characteristic of K3)
The Euler characteristic of is times the Euler characteristic of :
By the Whitney sum formula for the Euler class we have . Hence the statement follows by Prop. .
By the general formula for Pontryagin classes of product spaces we have
In positive characteristic :
The Néron-Severi group of a K3 is a free abelian group
The formal Brauer group is
either the formal additive group, in which case it has height , by definition;
or its height is , and every value may occur
(Artin 74), see also (Artin-Mazur 77, p. 5 (of 46))
moduli spaces of line n-bundles with connection on -dimensional
The third stable homotopy group of spheres (the third stable stem) is the cyclic group of order 24:
where the generator is represented by the quaternionic Hopf fibration .
Under the Pontrjagin-Thom isomorphism, identifying the stable homotopy groups of spheres with the bordism ring of stably framed manifolds (see at MFr), this generator is represented by the 3-sphere (with its left-invariant framing induced from the identification with the Lie group SU(2) Sp(1) )
Moreover, the relation is represented by the bordism which is the complement of 24 open balls inside the K3-manifold (Wang-Xu 10, Sec. 2.6).
See at elliptically fibered K3-surface.
See
Original sources:
Michael Artin, Supersingular K3 Surfaces, Annal. Sc. d, l’Éc Norm. Sup. 4e séries, T. 7, fasc. 4, 1974, pp. 543-568
Andre Weil, Final report on contract AF 18 (603)-57. In Scientific works. Collected papers. Vol. II (1951-1964). 1979.
Textbook accounts include
Lecture notes:
Daniel Huybrechts, Lectures on K3-surfaces, Cambridge University Press 2016 (pdf, pdf, doi:10.1017/CBO9781316594193)
David Morrison, The geometry of K3 surfaces Lecture notes (1988)
Viacheslav Nikulin, Elliptic fibrations on K3 surfaces (arXiv:1010.3904)
Discussion of the deformation theory of K3-surfaces (of their Picard schemes) is (see also at Artin-Mazur formal group) in
Systematic construction of Ricci flat Riemannian metrics on K3 orbifolds:
Shamit Kachru, Arnav Tripathy, Max Zimet, K3 metrics (arXiv:2006.02435)
Arnav Tripathy, Max Zimet, A plethora of K3 metrics (arXiv:2010.12581)
O. Lecacheux, Weierstrass Equations for the Elliptic Fibrations of a K3 Surface In: Balakrishnan J., Folsom A., Lalín M., Manes M. (eds.) Research Directions in Number Theory Association for Women in Mathematics Series, vol 19. Springer (2019) (doi:10.1007/978-3-030-19478-9_4)
Marie Bertin, Elliptic Fibrations on K3 surfaces, 2013 (pdf)
In string theory, the KK-compactification of type IIA string theory/M-theory/F-theory on K3-fibers is supposed to exhibit te duality between M/F-theory and heterotic string theory, originally due to
Chris Hull, Paul Townsend, section 6 of Unity of Superstring Dualities, Nucl.Phys.B438:109-137,1995 (arXiv:hep-th/9410167)
Edward Witten, section 4 of String Theory Dynamics In Various Dimensions, Nucl.Phys.B443:85-126,1995 (arXiv:hep-th/9503124)
Review includes
Further discussion includes
Paul Aspinwall, David Morrison, String Theory on K3 Surfaces, in Brian Greene, Shing-Tung Yau (eds.), Mirror Symmetry II, International Press, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 703-716 (arXiv:hep-th/9404151)
Paul Aspinwall, Enhanced Gauge Symmetries and K3 Surfaces, Phys.Lett. B357 (1995) 329-334 (arXiv:hep-th/9507012)
Specifically in relation to orbifold string theory:
Katrin Wendland, Orbifold Constructions of K3: A Link between Conformal Field Theory and Geometry, in Orbifolds in Mathematics and Physics [arXiv:hep-th/0112006]
Anne Taormina, Katrin Wendland, Symmetry-surfing the moduli space of Kummer K3s, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 90 (2015) 129 [arXiv:1303.2931, doi:10.1090/pspum/090/01522]
Specifically in relation to the putative K-theory-classification of D-brane charge:
Specifically in M-theory on G₂-manifolds:
Specifically in relation to Moonshine:
Specifically in relation to little string theory:
Last revised on July 18, 2024 at 11:09:33. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.