I've been noticing that a whole lot of papers published to the Arxiv recently involve K3 surfaces. Can anyone give me (someone who, at this point, knows little more about K3 surfaces than their definition) an idea why they are coming up so often?
Some questions that might be relevant: Are there particular reasons that they are so important? Are there special techniques that are available for K3 surfaces, but not more generally, making them easier to study? Are they just "in vogue" at the moment? Are they more like a subject of research (e.g., people are carrying out some sort of program to better understand K3 surfaces) or a testing ground (people with ideas in all sorts of different areas end up working the ideas out over K3 surfaces, because more general versions are much more difficult)?
