English

Moduli map of second fundamental forms on a nonsingular intersection of two quadrics

Algebraic Geometry 2017-06-05 v1

Abstract

In [GH], Griffiths and Harris asked whether a projective complex submanifold of codimension two is determined by the moduli of its second fundamental forms. More precisely, given a nonsingular subvariety XnPn+2X^n \subset {\mathbb P}^{n+2}, the second fundamental form IIX,xII_{X,x} at a point xXx \in X is a pencil of quadrics on Tx(X)T_x(X), defining a rational map μX\mu^X from XX to a suitable moduli space of pencils of quadrics on a complex vector space of dimension nn. The question raised by Griffiths and Harris was whether the image of μX\mu^X determines XX. We study this question when XnPn+2X^n \subset {\mathbb P}^{n+2} is a nonsingular intersection of two quadric hypersurfaces of dimension n>4n >4. In this case, the second fundamental form IIX,xII_{X,x} at a general point xXx \in X is a nonsingular pencil of quadrics. Firstly, we prove that the moduli map μX\mu^X is dominant over the moduli of nonsingular pencils of quadrics. This gives a negative answer to Griffiths-Harris's question. To remedy the situation, we consider a refined version μ~X\widetilde\mu^X of the moduli map μX\mu^X, which takes into account the infinitesimal information of μX\mu^X. Our main result is an affirmative answer in terms of the refined moduli map: we prove that the image of μ~X\widetilde\mu^X determines XX, among nonsingular intersections of two quadrics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.00551,
  title  = {Moduli map of second fundamental forms on a nonsingular intersection of two quadrics},
  author = {Yewon Jeong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.00551},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

To appear in Mathematische Annalen