Volumes of Zariski chambers

Abstract

Zariski chambers are natural pieces into which the big cone of an algebraic surface decomposes. They have so far been studied both from a geometric and from a combinatorial perspective. In the present paper we complement the picture with a metric point of view by studying a suitable notion of chamber sizes. Our first result gives a precise condition for the nef cone volume to be finite and provides a method for computing it inductively. Our second result determines the volumes of arbitrary Zariski chambers from nef cone volumes of blow-downs. We illustrate the applicability of this method by explicitly determining the chamber volumes on Del Pezzo and other anti-canonical surfaces.