Fano 3 folds in codimension 4 Tom and Jerry Part I

We introduce a strategy based on Kustin-Miller unprojection that allows us to construct many hundreds of Gorenstein codimension 4 ideals with 9 × 16 resolutions (that is, nine equations and sixteen first syzygies). Our two basic games are called Tom and Jerry; the main application is the biregular construction of most of the anticanonically polarised Mori Fano 3-folds of Altinok's thesis. There are 115 cases whose numerical data (in effect, the Hilbert series) allow a Type I projection. In every case, at least one Tom and one Jerry construction works, providing at least two deformation families of quasismooth Fano 3-folds having the same numerics but different topology. © 2012 Copyright Foundation Compositio Mathematica.