Groups acting freely on Calabi–Yau threefolds embedded in a product of del Pezzo surfaces

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate quotients of Calabi-Yau manifolds $Y$ embedded in Fano varieties $X$, which are products of two del Pezzo surfaces — with respect to groups $G$ that act freely on $Y$. In particular, we revisit some known examples and we obtain some new Calabi-Yau varieties with small Hodge numbers. The groups $G$ are subgroups of the automorphism groups of $X$, which is described in terms of the automorphism group of the two del Pezzo surfaces.