Elliptic surface

In mathematics, an elliptic surface is a surface that has an elliptic fibration, in other words a proper morphism with connected fibers to an algebraic curve such that almost all fibers are smooth curves of genus 1. (Over an algebraically closed field such as the complex numbers, these fibers are elliptic curves, perhaps without a chosen origin.) This is equivalent to the generic fiber being a smooth curve of genus one. This follows from proper base change.

The surface and the base curve are assumed to be non-singular (complex manifolds or regular schemes, depending on the context). The fibers that are not elliptic curves are called the singular fibers and were classified by Kunihiko Kodaira. Both elliptic and singular fibers are important in string theory, especially in F-theory.

Elliptic surfaces form a large class of surfaces that contains many of the interesting examples of surfaces, and are relatively well-understood in the theories of complex manifolds and smooth 4-manifolds. They are similar to (have analogies with, that is), elliptic curves over number fields.

Most of the fibers of an elliptic fibration are (non-singular) elliptic curves. The remaining fibers are called singular fibers: there are a finite number of them, and they consist of unions of rational curves, possibly with singularities or non-zero multiplicities (so the fibers may be non-reduced schemes). Kodaira and Néron independently classified the possible fibers, and Tate's algorithm can be used to find the type of the fibers of an elliptic curve over a number field.

The following table lists the possible fibers of a minimal elliptic fibration. ("Minimal" means roughly one that cannot be factored through a "smaller" one; precisely, the singular fibers should contain no smooth rational curves with self-intersection number −1.) It gives:

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