Related papers: A very general quartic double fourfold or fivefold…
There are three types of involutions on a cubic fourfold; two of anti-symplectic type, and one symplectic. Here we show that cubics with involutions exhibit the full range of behaviour in relation to rationality conjectures. Namely, we show…
It is a classical result that there are $12$ (irreducible) rational cubic curves through $8$ generic points in $\mathbb{P}_{\mathbb{C}}^2$, but little is known about the non-generic cases. The space of $8$-point configurations is…
Recent results of Hassett, Kuznetsov and others pointed out countably many divisors $C_d$ in the open subset of $\mathbb{P}^{55}=\mathbb{P}(H^0(\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{P}^5}(3)))$ parametrizing all cubic 4-folds and lead to the conjecture that…
We study obstructions to rationality on a nodal Fano threefold $M$ that is a double cover of a smooth quadric threefold ramified over an intersection with a quartic threefold in $\mathbb{P}^4$. We prove that if $M$ admits an Artin--Mumford…
It is shown that rational and polynomial convexity of totally real submanifolds is in general unstable under perturbations that are $C^\alpha$-small for any H\"older exponent $\alpha<1$. This complements the result of L{\o}w and Wold that…
It is proved that a smooth rational surface in projective four-space, which is ruled by cubics or quartics has degree at most 12. It is also proved that a smooth rational surface in projective four-space which is the image of Fn by a linear…
We prove a criterion of nonsingularity of a complete intersection of two fiberwise quadrics in a scroll over $P^1$. As a corollary we derive the following addition to the Alexeev theorem on rationality of standard Del Pezzo fibrations of…
For a general cubic fourfold $X \subset \mathbb{P}^5$, we compute the Hodge numbers of the locus $S \subset F$ of lines of second type. We also give an upper bound of 6 for the degree of irrationality of the Fano scheme of lines of any…
A well known conjecture asserts that a cubic fourfold X is rational if it has a cohomologically associated K3 surface. G.Ouchi proved that if X admits a finite group G of symplectic automorphisms, whose order is different from 2, then X has…
A general linear determinantal quartic in $\mathbb{P}^4$ is nodal, non-$\mathbb{Q}$-factorial and rational. We show that the family $\mathcal{F}$ of such quartics also contains rational $\mathbb{Q}$-factorial quartics, and that a generic…
The Russell cubic is a smooth contractible affine complex threefold which is not isomorphic to affine three-space. In previous articles, we discussed the structure of the automorphism group of this variety. Here we review some consequences…
We show that extended graph 4-manifolds with positive Euler characteristic cannot support a complex structure. This result stems from a new proof of the fact that a closed real-hyperbolic 4-manifold cannot support a complex structure.…
We show that the very general Verra fourfold is irrational, using the Hodge atom framework of Katzarkov--Kontsevich--Pantev--Yu. Two novel points are: a refined analysis of Hodge atoms, based on the involution on the cohomology of $X$, and…
Following an idea of Ciliberto we show that double covers of projective r-space branched over an hypersurface of degree 2d are unirational provided r is sufficiently big with respect to d.
Segre proved that a smooth cubic surface over Q is unirational iff it has a rational point. We prove that the result also holds for cubic hypersurfaces over any field, including finite fields.
This is a survey of recent examples of varieties that are not stably rational. We review the specialization method based on properties of the Chow group of zero-cycles used in these examples and explain the point of view of unramified…
We classify rational, irreducible quartic symmetroids in projective 3-space. They are either singular along a line or a smooth conic section, or they have a triple point or a tacnode.
We give examples of smooth $\k$-unirational line-free quartic hypersurfaces over a non algebraically closed field $\k$. Unlike other methods of proving unirationality, our method does not rely on existence of linear spaces on quartics.
We construct singular quartic double fivefolds whose Kuznetsov component admits a crepant categorical resolution of singularities by a twisted Calabi--Yau threefold. We also construct rational specializations of these fivefolds where such a…
We compute the small quantum cohomology of Gushel-Mukai fourfolds. Following [13], our computations imply that the very general ones are not rational. Following [8], and thanks to a suitable deformation of the small quantum cohomology ring,…