Calabi-Yau Varieties via Cyclic Covers, and Complex Hyperbolic Structures for their Moduli Spaces

Abstract

In this paper we mainly study Calabi-Yau varieties that arise as triple covers of products of projective lines branched along simple normal crossing divisors. For some of those families of Calabi-Yau varieties, the period maps factor through arithmetic quotients of complex hyperbolic balls. We give a classification of such examples. One of the families was previously studied by Voisin, Borcea and Rohde. For these ball-type cases, we will show arithmeticity of the monodromy groups. These ball quotients are all commensurable to ball quotients in Deligne-Mostow theory. As a byproduct, we prove some commensurability relations among arithmetic groups in Deligne-Mostow theory.