Related papers: Looijenga's Conjecture via Integral-affine Geometr…

The Eckardt hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^{19}$ parameterizes smooth cubic surfaces with an Eckardt point, which is a point common to three of the $27$ lines on a smooth cubic surface. We describe the cubic surfaces lying on the singular…

In arXiv:1008.3825, Totaro gave examples of a K3 surface such that its automorphism group is not commensurable with an arithmetic group, answering a question of Mazur. We give examples of rational surfaces with the same property. Our…

A well-known conjecture of Caratheodory states that the number of umbilic points on a closed convex surface in ${\mathbb E}^3$ must be greater than one. In this paper we prove this for $C^{3+\alpha}$-smooth surfaces. The Conjecture is first…

In the open problem of classification of rational cuspidal plane curves it is essential to find good necessary conditions on the type of singularities of a curve C in order C to exit. Motivated by the study of the Seiberg-Witten invariant…

Choosing a normal crossings anticanonical divisor of $\mathbb{P}^2$ leads to four log Calabi-Yau surfaces, three of which are Looijenga pairs. In this survey article, I describe how to count rational curves in these that intersect each…

We prove the following special case of Mazur's conjecture on the topology of rational points. Let $E$ be an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ with $j$-invariant $1728$. For a class of elliptic pencils which are quadratic twists of $E$ by…

Let E be a plane rational curve defined over complex numbers which has only locally irreducible singularities. The Coolidge-Nagata conjecture states that E is rectifiable, i.e. it can be transformed into a line by a birational automorphism…

We study a useful numerical invariant of normal surface singularities, introduced recently by T. Kawachi. Using this invariant, we give a quick proof of the (well-known) fact that all log-canonical surface singularities are either elliptic…

A smooth affine minimal surface with indefinite metric can be obtained from a pair of smooth non-intersecting spatial curves by Lelieuvre's formulas. These surfaces may present singularities, which are generically cuspidal edges and…

For an isolated hypersurface singularity $f=0$, the Milnor number $\mu$ is greater than or equal to the Tjurina number $\tau$ (the dimension of the base of the semi-universal deformation), with equality if $f$ is quasi-homogeneous. K. Saito…

Isolated hypersurface singularities come equipped with a Milnor lattice, a ${\mathbb Z}$-lattice of finite rank, and a set of $distinguished$ ${\mathbb Z}$-bases of this lattice. Usually these bases are constructed from $one$ morsification…

Any counterexample to the two-dimensional Jacobian Conjecture gives a rational map from one projective plane to another. We use some ideas of the Minimal Model Program to study the combinatorial structure of a rational surface, that is…

After recalling the various tautological algebras of the moduli space of curves and some of its partial compactifications and stating several well-known results and conjectures concerning these algebras, we prove that the natural extension…

We prove the filling area conjecture in the hyperelliptic case. In particular, we establish the conjecture for all genus 1 fillings of the circle, extending P. Pu's result in genus 0. We translate the problem into a question about closed…

Let Y be a surface with only finitely many singularities all of which are cusps. A set of cusps on Y is called three-divisible, if there is a cyclic global triple cover of Y branched precisely over these cusps. The aim of this note is to…

Let X be a projective, equidimensional, singular scheme over an algebraically closed field. Then the existence of a geometric smoothing (i.e. a family of deformations of X over a smooth base curve whose generic fibre is smooth) implies the…

We prove that any minimal Lagrangian diffeomorphism between two closed spherical surfaces with cone singularities is an isometry, without any assumption on the multiangles of the two surfaces. As an application, we show that every branched…

Inspired by his vanishing results of tautological classes and by Harer's computation of the virtual cohomological dimension of the mapping class group, Looijenga conjectured that the moduli space of smooth Riemann surfaces admits a…

Green's conjecture is proved for smooth curves C lying on a rational surface S with an anticanonical pencil, under some mild hypotheses on the line bundle L defined by C. Constancy of Clifford dimension, Clifford index and gonality of…

It has become obvious that certain singular phenomena cannot be explained by a mere investigation of the configuration space, defined as the solution set of the loop closure equations. For example, it was observed that a particular 6R…