Related papers: On Unirationality of Quartics over non Algebraical…
We prove that the moduli spaces of K3 surfaces with non-symplectic involutions are unirational. As a by-product we describe configuration spaces of 4<d<9 points in the projective plane as arithmetic quotients of type IV.
We report on our project to construct non-singular cubic surfaces over $\bbQ$ with a rational line. Our method is to start with degree 4 Del Pezzo surfaces in diagonal form. For these, we develop an explicit version of Galois descent.
We prove that a smooth, subcanonical surface of P^4 (projective space over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero) is complete intersection if it is contained in a quartic hypersurface.
We prove the birational superrigidity and the nonrationality of a cyclic triple cover of $\mathbb{P}^{2n}$ branched over a nodal hypersurface of degree $3n$ for $n\ge 2$. In particular, the obtained result solves the problem of the…
Let X be a non-singular projective hypersurface of degree 4, which is defined over the rational numbers. Assume that X has dimension 39 or more, and that X contains a real point and p-adic points for every prime p. Then X is shown to…
Inspir\'es par un argument de C. Voisin, nous montrons l'existence d'hypersurfaces quartiques lisses dans ${\bf P}^4_{\mathbb C}$ qui ne sont pas stablement rationnelles, plus pr\'ecis\'ement dont le groupe de Chow de degr\'e z\'ero n'est…
We develop a theory of Prym varieties and cubic threefolds over fields of characteristic $2$. As an application, we prove that smooth cubic threefolds are non-rational over an arbitrary field and solve a conjecture of Deligne regarding…
We construct a surface over $\overline{\mathbb{F}}_p$ with $\pi_1^{\'{e}t}(X) = 1$ that is supersingular -- in the sense that $H^2_{\'{e}t}(X, \mathbb{Q}_{\ell}(1))$ is spanned by algebraic cycles -- but is not unirational. This provides a…
For any affine hypersurface defined by a complete symmetric polynomial in $k\geq 3$ variables of degree $m$ over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ of $q$ elements, a special case of our theorem says that this hypersurface has at least…
We use the Clemens-Griffiths method to construct smooth projective threefolds, over any field $k$ admitting a separable quadratic extension, that are $k$-unirational and $\bar{k}$-rational but not $k$-rational. When $k=\mathbb{R}$, we can…
We show that any smooth projective cubic hypersurface of dimension at least $29$ over the rationals contains a rational line. A variation of our methods provides a similar result over p-adic fields. In both cases, we improve on previous…
The aim of this short note is to define the \it universal cubic fourfold \rm over certain loci of their moduli space. Then, we propose two methods to prove that it is unirational over the Hassett divisors $\mathcal{C}_d$, in the range…
The aim of this short note is to give a simple proof of the non-rationality of the double cover of the three-dimensional projective space branched over a sufficiently general quartic.
We give a systematic construction of uniruled surfaces in positive characteristic. Using this construction, we find surfaces of general type with non-trivial vector fields, surfaces with arbitrarily non-reduced Picard schemes as well as…
We describe a method to show that certain elliptic surfaces do not admit purely inseparable multisections (equivalently, that genus one curves over function fields admit no points over the perfect closure of the base field) and use it to…
For every field $k$ of characteristic zero, we determine the groups that act as automorphisms on a smooth cubic surface over $k$. We also determine the groups that act on $k$-rational, stably $k$-rational, or $k$-unirational smooth cubic…
We prove that smooth quartic threefolds are symplectically irrational, i.e., cannot be related to projective space by a series of symplectic blow-ups, blow-downs, and deformations. This implies that they are algebraically irrational,…
It is proved that the non-rationality of a generic cubic fourfold follows from a conjecture on the non-decomposability in the direct sum of non-trivial polarized Hodge structures of the polarized Hodge structure on transcendental cycles on…
Let $\Bbbk$ be any field of characteristic zero, $X$ be a del Pezzo surface of degree~$2$ and $G$ be a group acting on $X$. In this paper we study $\Bbbk$-rationality questions for the quotient surface $X / G$. If there are no smooth…
In this paper we classify three-dimensional singular cubic hypersurfaces with an action of a finite group $G$, which are not $G$-rational, are not $G$-birationally isomorphic to a quadric and have no birational structure of $G$-Mori fiber…