New families of Calabi-Yau 3-folds without maximal unipotent monodromy

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to construct families of Calabi--Yau 3-folds without boundary points with maximal unipotent monodromy and to describe the variation of their Hodge structures. In particular five families are constructed. In all these cases the variation of the Hodge structures of the Calabi--Yau 3-folds is basically the variation of the Hodge structures of a family of curves. This allows us to write explicitly the Picard--Fuchs equation for the 1-dimensional families. These Calabi--Yau 3-folds are desingularizations of quotients of the product of a (fixed) elliptic curve and a K3 surface admitting an automorphisms of order 4 (with some particular properties). We show that these K3 surfaces admit an isotrivial elliptic fibration.