An elliptic conic bundle in P^4 arising from a stable rank-3 vector bundle

Abstract

In this note we show the existence of a family of elliptic conic bundles in P^4 of degree 8. This family has been overlooked and in fact falsely ruled out in a series of classification papers. Our surfaces provide a counterexample to a conjecture of Ellingsrud and Peskine. According to this conjecture there should be no irregular m-ruled surface in P^4 for m at least 2.