Line configurations and K3 surfaces

Abstract

We study the realization spaces of $10_3$ line configurations. Answering a question posed by Sturmfels in 1991, we use elliptic surface techniques to show that realizations over $\mathbb{Q}$ are dense in those over $\mathbb{R}$ for all $10_3$ configurations. We find that for exactly four of the ten configurations, the realization space admits a compactification by a K3 surface. We show that these have Picard number 20 and compute their discriminants. Finally, we use geometric invariant theory to give an elegant interpretation of these K3 surfaces as moduli spaces.