Related papers: On nodal Enriques surfaces and quartic double soli…
The topology of the orbit space, $Y$, for the action of the complex conjugation on a complex surface, $X$, defined over reals, is studied. I give a criterion for blow-up stable triviality of $Y$ (which implies vanishing of its…
We study the groups of automorphisms of rational algebraic surfaces that admit a relatively minimal pencil of curves of arithmetic genus one over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic. In particular, we classify such…
We study the Coulomb branches of the rank-one 4d $\mathcal{N} = 2$ quantum field theories, including the KK theories obtained from the circle compactification of the 5d $\mathcal{N}= 1$ $E_n$ Seiberg theories. The focus is set on the…
We prove that certain Severi varieties of nodal curves of positive genus on general blow-ups of the twofold symmetric product of a general elliptic curve are non-empty and smooth of the expected dimension. This result, besides its intrinsic…
We will show that there is a smooth complex projective surface, birational to some Enriques surface, such that the automorphism group is discrete but not finitely generated.
For every supersingular $K3$ surface $X$ in characteristic 2, there exists a homogeneous polynomial $G$ of degree 6 such that $X$ is birational to the purely inseparable double cover of a projective plane defined by $w^2=G$. We present an…
We consider the subspace of the homology of a covering space spanned by lifts of simple closed curves. Our main result is the existence of unbranched covers of surfaces where this is a proper subspace. More generally, for a fixed finite…
In 1981 J. Wahl described smoothings of surface quotient singularities with no vanishing cycles. Given a smoothing of a projective surface X of this type, we construct an associated exceptional vector bundle on the nearby fiber Y in the…
We describe, for various degenerations $S\to \Delta$ of quartic $K3$ surfaces over the complex unit disk (e.g., to the union of four general planes, and to a general Kummer surface), the limits as $t\in \Delta^*$ tends to 0 of the Severi…
The families of smooth rational surfaces in $\PP^4$ have been classified in degree $\le 10$. All known rational surfaces in $\PP^4$ can be represented as blow-ups of the plane $\PP^2$. The fine classification of these surfaces consists of…
We construct 1-parameter families of non-periodic embedded minimal surfaces of infinite genus in $T \times \mathbb{R}$, where $T$ denotes a flat 2-tori. Each of our families converges to a foliation of $T \times \mathbb{R}$ by $T$. These…
We survey some recent progress in the study of algebraic varieties X with log terminal singularities, especially, the uni-ruledness of the smooth locus X^0 of X, the fundamental group of X^0 and the automorphisms group on (smooth or…
We construct a simply connected minimal complex surface of general type with $p_g=0$ and $K^2=2$ which has an involution such that the minimal resolution of the quotient by the involution is a simply connected minimal complex surface of…
We construct two small resolutions of singularities of the Coble fourfold (the double cover of the four-dimensional projective space branched over the Igusa quartic). We use them to show that all $S_6$-invariant three-dimensional quartics…
Given a smooth genus three curve $C$, the moduli space of rank two stable vector bundles on C with trivial determinant embeds in $\mathbb{P}^8$ as a hypersurface whose singular locus is the Kummer threefold of $C$; this hypersurface is the…
This paper suggests a new approach to questions of rationality of threefolds based on category theory. Following M. Ballard, D. Favero, L. Katzarkov (ArXiv:1012.0864) and D. Favero, L. Katzarkov (Noether--Lefschetz Spectra and Algebraic…
A conjecture of Bondal-Polishchuk states that, in particular for the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on a smooth projective variety, the action of the braid group on full exceptional collections is transitive up to shifts. We…
We continue previous works by various authors and study the birational geometry of moduli spaces of stable rank-two vector bundles on surfaces with Kodaira dimension $-\infty$. To this end, we express vector bundles as natural extensions,…
We study a double cover $\psi:X\to V\subset\mathbb{P}^{n}$ branched over a smooth divisor $R\subset V$ such that $R$ is cut on $V$ by a hypersurface of degree $2(n-\mathrm{deg}(V))$, where $n\geqslant 8$ and $V$ is a smooth hypersurface of…
Given a variety $Y$ with a rectangular Lefschetz decomposition of its derived category, we consider a degree $n$ cyclic cover $X \to Y$ ramified over a divisor $Z \subset Y$. We construct semiorthogonal decompositions of $\mathrm{D^b}(X)$…