Abstract. Let X be a complex algebraic K3 surface or a supersingular K3 surface in odd characteristic. We present an algorithm by which, under certain assumptions on X, we can calculate a finite set of generators of the image of the natural homomorphism from the automorphism group of X to the orthogonal group of the Néron-Severi lattice of X. We then apply this algorithm to certain complex K3 surfaces, among which are singular K3 surfaces whose transcendental lattices are of small discriminants.
IntroductionThe automorphism group Aut(X) of an algebraic K3 surface X is an important and interesting object. Suppose that X is defined over the complex number field C, or is supersingular in odd characteristic. Then, thanks to the Torelli-type theorem due to and Ogus [21], [22], we can study Aut(X) by the Néron-Severi lattice S X of X. We denote by O(S X ) the orthogonal group of S X . Then we have a natural homomorphism ϕ X : Aut(X) → O(S X ).It is known that this homomorphism has only a finite kernel. Using the reduction theory for arithmetic subgroups of O(S X ), Sterk [36] and Lieblich and Maulik [16] proved that Aut(X) is finitely generated. The Néron-Severi lattices for which Aut(X) are finite were classified by Nikulin [18], [19] and Vinberg [40]. On the other hand, when Aut(X) is infinite, it is in general a difficult problem to give a set of generators.We also have the following related problem. Let Nef(X) denote the nef cone of X; that is, the cone of S X ⊗ R consisting of vectors x ∈ S X ⊗ R such that x, C ≥ 0 holds for any curve C on X, where , is the intersection form on S X . In order to classify various geometric objects on X (for example, smooth rational curves, Jacobian fibrations, or polarizations of a fixed degree) modulo Aut(X), it is useful to describe explicitly a fundamental domain of the action of Aut(X) on Nef(X). Several authors have studied these problems by using the idea of Borcherds [4], [5] to embed S X into an even unimodular hyperbolic lattice of rank 26. In these works, however, they required that S X should satisfy a certain strong condition (see Section 1.1 below for the details), and hence the range of applications is limited.The purpose of this paper is to present an algorithm (Algorithm 6.1) that calculates, under assumptions on S X milder than the preceding works, a finite set of generators of the image of ϕ X and a closed domain F of Nef(X) with the following properties:(i) For any v ∈ Nef(X), there exists an element g ∈ Aut(X) such that v g ∈ F .(ii) The domain F is tiled by a finite number of convex cones, which we call chambers. Each chamber is bounded by a finite number of hyperplanes and its stabilizer subgroup in Aut(X) is finite.See Remark 6.5 for the relation of F with a fundamental domain of the action of Aut(X) on Nef(X). The detailed description of the assumptions we impose on S X will be given in Section 8. The algorithm can be applied to a wide class of K3 surfaces. We give two examples. Example 1.1. As an example of a K3 surface with small Picard number and an i...