Deformations and extensions of Gorenstein weighted projective spaces

Abstract

We study the existence of deformations of all $14$ Gorenstein weighted projective spaces $\mathbf P$ of dimension $3$ by computing the number of times their general anticanonical divisors are extendable. In favorable cases (8 out of 14), we find that $\mathbf P$ deforms to a $3$-dimensional extension of a general non-primitive polarized $K3$ surface. On our way we show that each such $\mathbf P$ in its anticanonical model satisfies property $N_2$, and we compute the deformation space of the cone over $\mathbf P$. This gives as a byproduct the exact number of times $\mathbf P$ is extendable.