A geometric criterion for the finite generation of the Cox rings of projective surfaces

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to give a geometric characterization of the finite generation of the Cox rings of anticanonical rational surfaces. This characterization is encoded in the finite generation of the effective monoid. Furthermore, we prove that in the case of a smooth projective rational surface having a negative multiple of its canonical divisor with only two linearly independent global sections (e.g., an elliptic rational surface), the finite generation is equivalent to the fact that there are only a finite number of smooth projective rational curves of self-intersection −1. The ground field is assumed to be algebraically closed of arbitrary characteristic.