Moduli spaces and period mappings of genus one fibered K3 surfaces

Abstract: In this paper we construct various moduli spaces of K3 surfaces $M$ equipped with a surjective holomorphic map $\pi:M\to\Pb^1$ with generic fiber a complex torus (e.g., an elliptic fibration). Examples include moduli spaces of such maps with primitive fibers; with reduced, irreducible fibers; equipped with a section; etc. Such spaces are closely related to the moduli space of Ricci-flat metrics on $M$. We construct period mappings relating these moduli spaces to locally symmetric spaces, and use these to compute their (orbifold) fundamental groups. These results lie in contrast to, and exhibit different behavior than, the well-studied case of moduli spaces of polarized K3 surfaces, and are more useful for applications to the mapping class group $\Mod(M)$. Indeed, we apply our results on moduli space to give two applications to the smooth mapping class group of $M$.