Tri-Coble surfaces and their automorphisms

Abstract

We construct some positive entropy automorphisms of rational surfaces with no periodic curves. The surfaces in question, which we term tri-Coble surfaces, are blow-ups of the projective plane at 12 points which have contractions down to three different Coble surfaces. The automorphisms arise as compositions of lifts of Bertini involutions from certain degree 1 weak del Pezzo surfaces.