Related papers: Constructions of singular rational surfaces of Pic…

This paper gives a new perspective on singular canards, which is topological in flavour. One key feature is that our construction does not rely on coordinates; consequently, the conditions for the existence of singular canards that we…

Consider a smooth projective curve and a given embedding into projective space via a sufficiently positive line bundle. We can form the secant variety of $k$-planes through the curve. These are singular varieties, with each secant variety…

We construct a surface with irregularity $q=2,$ geometric genus $p_g=3,$ self-intersection of the canonical divisor $K^2=16$ and canonical map of degree $16.$

Let $\Sigma$ be a smooth projective surface, let $f' : S' \to \Sigma$ be a double cover of $\Sigma$ and let $\mu : S \to S'$ be the canonical resolution. Put $f = f'\circ\mu$. An irreducible curve $C$ on $\Sigma$ is said to be a splitting…

In this paper we give a necessary combinatorial condition for a negative--definite plumbing tree to be suitable for rational blow--down, or to be the graph of a complex surface singularity which admits a rational homology disk smoothing.…

We answer a question of Ciro Ciliberto about cylinders in rational surfaces which are obtained by blowing up the plane at points in general position.

We make a very detailed analysis of the numerical properties of effective divisors whose support is contained in the exceptional locus of a birational morphism of smooth projective surfaces. As an application we extend Miyaoka's inequality…

We give necessary and sufficient topological conditions for a simple closed curve on a real rational surface to be approximable by smooth rational curves. We also study approximation by smooth rational curves with given complex…

It is a conjecture of Koll\'ar that a variety $X$ with rational singularities in some open subvariety $U$ has a rationalification; that is, a proper, birational morphism $f: Y \rightarrow X$ such that $Y$ has rational singularities, and…

In this note, we construct some minimal smooth surfaces of general type with canonical map of degree $ 13, 15, 17, 18, 21, 22 $. These surfaces are constructed as $ \mathbb{Z}_{3}^2$-covers of a blow-up of $ \mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1…

We consider a class of discontinuous piecewise linear differential systems in $\mathbb{R}^3$ with two pieces separated by a plane. In this class we show that there exist differential systems having: a unique limit cycle, a unique…

A rational elliptic surface with section is a smooth, rational, complex, projective surface $\mathcal{X}$ that admits a relatively minimal fibration $f: \mathcal{X}\longrightarrow \bbP^1$ such that its general fibre is a smooth irreducible…

The first published non-trivial examples of algebraic surfaces of general type with maximal Picard number are due to Persson, who constructed surfaces with maximal Picard number on the Noether line $K^2=2\chi-6$ for every admissible pair…

For a smooth complex projective variety, the rank of the N\'eron-Severi group is bounded by the Hodge number h^{1,1}. Varieties with rk NS = h^{1,1} have interesting properties, but are rather sparse, particularly in dimension 2. We discuss…

We give a construction of singular curves with many rational points over finite fields. This construction enables us to prove some results on the maximum number of rational points on an absolutely irreducible projective algebraic curve…

We introduce orbifold Euler numbers for normal surfaces with Q-divisors. These numbers behave multiplicatively under finite maps and in the log canonical case we prove that they satisfy the Bogomolov-Miyaoka-Yau type inequality. As a…

Let $X$ be a simple normal crossing (SNC) compact complex surface with trivial canonical bundle which includes triple intersections. We prove that if $X$ is $d$-semistable, then there exists a family of smoothings in a differential…

In this paper we describe six pencils of K3-surfaces which have large Picard-Number and contain precisely five singular fibers: four have A-D-E singularities and one is non-reduced. In particular we describe these surfaces as cyclic…

We classify completely the surfaces of general type whose canonical map is 3-to-1 onto a surface of minimal degree in projective space. These surfaces fall into 5 distinct classes and we give explicit examples belonging to each of these…

We survey some results on real rational surfaces focused on their topology and their birational geometry.