Related papers: Manifolds covered by lines, defective manifolds an…

Small codimensional embedded manifolds defined byequations of small degree are Fano and covered by lines. They are complete intersections exactly when the variety of lines through a general point is so and has the right codimension. This…

An embedded manifold is dual defective if its dual variety is not a hypersurface. Using the geometry of the variety of lines through a general point, we characterize scrolls among dual defective manifolds. This leads to an optimal bound for…

We continue the study, begun by the second author in math.AG/0701889, of secant defective manifolds having "simple entry loci". We prove that such manifolds are rational and describe them in terms of tangential projections. Using also our…

Let $X\subset P^n$ be a complex projective manifold of degree $d$ and arbitrary dimension. The main result of this paper gives a classification of such manifolds (assumed moreover to be connected, non-degenerate and linearly normal) in case…

The Hartshorne conjecture predicts that two submanifolds X and Y in a projective manifold Z with ample normal bundles meets as soon as dim X + dim Y is at least dim Z. We mostly assume slightly stronger that one of the normal bundles is…

This note continues our previous work on special secant defective (specifically, conic connected and local quadratic entry locus) and dual defective manifolds. These are now well understood, except for the prime Fano ones. Here we add a few…

The Debarre-de Jong conjecture predicts that the Fano variety of lines on a smooth Fano hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^n$ is always of the expected dimension. We generalize this conjecture to the case of Fano complete intersections and prove…

We propose an analogue of Dubrovin's conjecture for the case where Fano manifolds have quantum connections of exponential type. It includes the case where the quantum cohomology rings are not necessarily semisimple. The conjecture is…

The doubling conjecture predicts that a manifold admits positive scalar curvature with mean convex boundary if and only if its double admits positive scalar curvature. We show that it holds true for manifolds where the inclusion of the…

Let $X \subset \mathbb{P}^{n+c}$ be a nondegenerate smooth projective variety of dimension $n$ defined by quadratic equations. For such varieties, P. Ionescu and F. Russo proved the Hartshorne conjecture on complete intersections, which…

We study some properties of an embedded variety covered by lines and give a numerical criterion ensuring the existence of a singular conic through two of its general points. We show that our criterion is sharp. Conic-connected, covered by…

We study a particular class of rationally connected manifolds, $X\subset \p^N$, such that two general points $x,x' \in X$ may be joined by a conic contained in $X$. We prove that these manifolds are Fano, with $b_2\leq 2$. Moreover, a…

General linear sections of codimension 2 of the Grassmannians G(1,4) and G(1,5) appear in the classification of Fano manifolds of high index. Unlike Grassmannians, these manifolds are not homogeneous. Nevertheless, their automorphisms…

For a log Fano manifold (X, D) with D\neq 0 and with the log Fano pseudoindex \geq 2, we prove that the restriction homomorphism Pic(X)\to Pic(D_1) of Picard groups is injective for any irreducible component D_1\subset D.The strategy of our…

We prove that a weak Fano manifold has unobstructed deformations. For a general variety, we investigate conditions under which a variety is necessarily obstructed.

We obtain bounds on the least dimension of an affine space that can contain an $n$-dimensional submanifold without any pairs of parallel or intersecting tangent lines at distinct points. This problem is closely related to the generalized…

We propose conjectural semiorthogonal decompositions for Fano schemes of linear subspaces on intersections of two quadrics, in terms of symmetric powers of the associated hyperelliptic (resp. stacky) curve. When the intersection is…

Let $X$ be a Fano manifold which is the zero scheme of a general global section $s$ in an irreducible homogenous vector bundle over a Grassmannian. We prove that the restriction of the Pl\"ucker embedding embeds $X$ projectively normal, and…

We classify all closed, aspherical Riemannian manifolds M whose universal cover has indiscrete isometry group. One sample application is the theorem that any such M with word-hyperbolic fundamental group must be isometric to a negatively…

For an embedded Fano manifold $X$, we introduce a new invariant $S_X$ related to the dimension of covering linear spaces. The aim of this paper is to classify Fano manifolds $X$ which have large $S_X$.