In mathematics, Enriques surfaces are algebraic surfaces such that the irregularity q = 0 and the canonical line bundle K is non-trivial but has trivial square. Enriques surfaces are all projective (and therefore Kähler over the complex numbers) and are elliptic surfaces of genus 0. Over fields of characteristic not 2 they are quotients of K3 surfaces by a group of order 2 acting without fixed points and their theory is similar to that of algebraic K3 surfaces. Enriques surfaces were first studied in detail by Enriques (1896) as an answer to a question discussed by Castelnuovo (1895) about whether a surface with q=pg = 0 is necessarily rational, though some of the Reye congruences introduced earlier by Reye (1882) are also examples of Enriques surfaces.
Enriques surfaces can also be defined over other fields. Over fields of characteristic other than 2, Artin (1960) showed that the theory is similar to that over the complex numbers. Over fields of characteristic 2 the definition is modified, and there are two new families, called singular and supersingular Enriques surfaces, described by Bombieri & Mumford (1976). These two extra families are related to the two non-discrete algebraic group schemes of order 2 in characteristic 2.
The plurigenera Pn are 1 if n is even and 0 if n is odd. The fundamental group has order 2. The second cohomology group H2(X, Z) is isomorphic to the sum of the unique even unimodular lattice II1,9 of dimension 10 and signature -8 and a group of order 2.
Hodge diamond:
Marked Enriques surfaces form a connected 10-dimensional family, which Kondo (1994) showed is rational.
In characteristic 2 there are some new families of Enriques surfaces, sometimes called quasi Enriques surfaces or non-classical Enriques surfaces or (super)singular Enriques surfaces. (The term "singular" does not mean that the surface has singularities, but means that the surface is "special" in some way.) In characteristic 2 the definition of Enriques surfaces is modified: they are defined to be minimal surfaces whose canonical class K is numerically equivalent to 0 and whose second Betti number is 10. (In characteristics other than 2 this is equivalent to the usual definition.) There are now 3 families of Enriques surfaces: