Pillow Degenerations of K3 Surfaces

Ciro Ciliberto, Rick Miranda, Mina Teicher

Published 2002-09-23Version 1

In this article we construct a specific projective degeneration of K3 surfaces of degree 2g-2 in P^g to a union of 2g-2 planes, which meet in such a way that the combinatorics of the configuration of planes is a triangulation of the 2-sphere. Abstractly, such degenerations are said to be Type III degenerations of K3 surfaces. Although the birational geometry of such degenerations is fairly well understood, the study of projective degenerations is not nearly as completely developed. In this article we construct degenerations for which the general member is embedded by a multiple of the primitive line bundle class.