On the Cox rings of some hypersurfaces

We introduce a cohomological method to compute Cox rings of hypersurfaces in the ambient space P^1 x P^n, which is more direct than existing methods. We prove that smooth hypersurfaces defined by regular sequences of coefficients are Mori dream spaces, generalizing a result of Ottem. We also compute Cox rings of certain specialized examples. In particular, we compute Cox rings in the well-studied family of Calabi--Yau threefolds of bidegree (2,4) in P^1 x P^3, determining explicitly how the Cox ring can jump discontinuously in a smooth family.