Related papers: On the varieties of the second row of the split Fr…

The split version of the Freudenthal-Tits magic square stems from Lie theory and constructs a Lie algebra starting from two split composition algebras [3, 17, 18]. The geometries appearing in the second row are Severi-Brauer varieties [20].…

The main achievement of this paper is a geometric characterisation of certain subvarieties of the Cartan variety (the standard projective variety associated to the split exceptional group of Lie type E_6) over an arbitrary field K. The…

We study the projective geometry of homogeneous varieties $X= G/P\subset P(V)$, where $G$ is a complex simple Lie group, $P$ is a maximal parabolic subgroup and $V$ is the minimal $G$-module associated to $P$. Our study began with the…

We characterize $d$-uple Veronese embeddings of finite-dimensional projective spaces. The easiest non-trivial instance of our theorem is the embedding of the projective plane in 5-dimensional projective space, a result obtained in 1901 by…

Segre surfaces in the title mean quartic surfaces in $\mathbb{CP}^4$ which are the images of weak del Pezzo surfaces of degree four under the anti-canonical map. We first show that minimal minitwistor spaces with genus one are exactly Segre…

We construct wonderful compactifications of the spaces of linear maps, and symmetric linear maps of a given rank as blow-ups of secant varieties of Segre and Veronese varieties. Furthermore, we investigate their birational geometry and…

Motivated by the study of the secant variety of the Segre-Veronese variety we propose a general framework to analyze properties of the secant varieties of toric embeddings of affine spaces defined by simplicial complexes. We prove that…

A classical result asserts that the complex projective plane modulo complex conjugation is the 4-dimensional sphere. We generalize this result in two directions by considering the projective planes over the normed real division algebras and…

We investigate nonintegrable Riemannian geometries modelled after certain symmetric spaces related to the Freudenthal-Tits Magic Square. The collection of four such structures found by Nurowski is extended by further eight. A focus is given…

We consider here the problem, which is quite classical in Algebraic geometry, of studying the secant varieties of a projective variety $X$. The case we concentrate on is when $X$ is a Veronese variety, a Grassmannian or a Segre variety. Not…

The ideal of a Segre variety is generated by the 2-minors of a generic hypermatrix of indeterminates. We extend this result to the case of Segre-Veronese varieties. The main tool is the concept of weak generic hypermatrix which allows us to…

Severi-Brauer varieties are twisted forms of projective spaces (in the sense of Galois cohomology) and are associated in a functorial way to central simple algebras. Similarly quadrics are related to algebras with involution. Since thin…

We classify complex projective varieties of dimension $2r \geq 8$ swept out by a family of codimension two grassmannians of lines $\mathbb{G}(1,r)$. They are either fibrations onto normal surfaces such that the general fibers are isomorphic…

This paper explores the dimensions of higher secant varieties to Segre-Veronese varieties. The main goal of this paper is to introduce two different inductive techniques. These techniques enable one to reduce the computation of the…

We study the varieties of reductions associated to the four Severi varieties, the first example of which is the Fano threefold of index 2 and degree 5 studied by Mukai and others. We prove that they are smooth but very special linear…

Tropical geometry yields good lower bounds, in terms of certain combinatorial-polyhedral optimisation problems, on the dimensions of secant varieties. In particular, it gives an attractive pictorial proof of the theorem of Hirschowitz that…

For a linear system $|C|$ on a smooth projective surface $S$, whose general element is a smooth, irreducible curve, the Severi variety $V_{|C|, \delta}$ is the locally closed subscheme of $|C|$ which parametrizes irreducible curves with…

We introduce the extended Freudenthal-Rosenfeld-Tits magic square based on six algebras: the reals $\mathbb{R}$, complexes $\mathbb{C}$, ternions $\mathbb{T}$, quaternions $\mathbb{H}$, sextonions $\mathbb{S}$ and octonions $\mathbb{O}$.…

The Severi variety V_{n,d} of a smooth projective surface S is defined as the subvariety of the linear system |O_S(n)|, which parametrizes curves with d nodes. We show that, for a general surface S of degree k in P^3 and for all n>k-1,…

In this paper we present an effective method for linearizing rational varieties of codimension at least two under Cremona transformations, starting from a given parametrization. Using these linearizing Cremonas, we simplify the equations of…