The present work is concerned with the study of four-dimensional irreducible holomorphic symplectic manifolds with second Betti number 23. We describe their birational geometry and their relations to EPW sextics.Proposition 2.1. Let X be an IHS fourfold with b 2 = 23. The Fujiki constant of X is an integer of the form 3n 2 for some n ∈ N. In particular the minimal degree of the self-intersection H 4 of an ample divisor H ⊂ X is 12 and in this case h 0 (O X (H)) = 6.
Proof. First from the H-R-R theorem for IHS fourfolds we infer thatRemark 2.2. For an IHS manifold X with b 2 (X) = 23 to admit an ample divisor with H 4 = 12 there are two possibilities:• The Fujiki invariant is 3, the B-B lattice is even and there exists an h ∈ H 2 (X, Z) with (h, h) = 2. • The Fujiki invariant is 12 and there exists an h ∈ H 2 (X, Z) with (h, h) = 1.It is a natural problem to decide whether the latter case can occur. 3 6