Congruence subgroups and Enriques surface automorphisms

Abstract: We give conceptual proofs of some results on the automorphism group of an Enriques surface X, for which only computational proofs have been available. Namely, there is an obvious upper bound on the image of Aut(X) in the isometry group of X's numerical lattice, and we establish a lower bound for the image that is quite close to this upper bound. These results apply over any algebraically closed field, provided that X lacks nodal curves, or that all its nodal curves are (numerically) congruent to each other mod 2. In this generality these results were originally proven by Looijenga and Cossec-Dolgachev, developing earlier work of Coble.