Related papers: Some low-dimensional hypersurfaces that are not st…

We show that a very general quartic hypersurface in $\mathbb P^6 $ over a field of characteristic different from 2 does not admit a decomposition of the diagonal, hence is not retract rational. This generalizes a result of Nicaise--Ottem,…

We study rational surfaces on very general Fano hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{P}^n$, with an eye toward unirationality. We prove that given any fixed family of rational surfaces, a very general hypersurface of degree $d$ sufficiently close to…

We show that complex Fano hypersurfaces can have arbitrarily large degrees of irrationality. More precisely, if we fix a Fano index e, then the degree of irrationality of a very general complex Fano hypersurface of index e and dimension n…

Let $S \subset \P^n$ be a smooth quartic hypersurface defined over a number field $K$. If $n \ge 4$, then for some finite extension $K'$ of $K$ the set $S(K')$ of $K'$-rational points of $S$ is Zariski dense.

In this paper, we prove that a very general cubic threefold does not admit a universal codimension-two cycle and hence is stably irrational.

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…

For sufficiently ample linear systems on rational surfaces we show that a very general associated Brauer-Severi surface bundle is not stably rational.

Let $Y$ be a smooth, projective curve of genus $g\geq 1$ over the complex numbers. Let $H^0_{d,A}(Y)$ be the Hurwitz space which parametrizes coverings $p:X \to Y$ of degree $d$, simply branched in $n=2e$ points, with monodromy group equal…

We consider surjective endomorphisms f of degree > 1 on projective manifolds X of Picard number one and their f^{-1}-stable hypersurfaces V, and show that V is rationally chain connected. Also given is an optimal upper bound for the number…

We give the first evidence for a conjecture that a general, index-one, Fano hypersurface is not unirational: (i) a general point of the hypersurface is contained in no rational surface ruled, roughly, by low-degree rational curves, and (ii)…

We prove that the general quartic double solid with $k\leq 7$ nodes does not admit a Chow theoretic decomposition of the diagonal, or equivalently has a nontrivial universal ${\rm CH}_0$ group. The same holds if we replace in this statement…

We prove that a complete intersection of $c$ very general hypersurfaces of degree at least two in $N$-dimensional complex projective space is not ruled (and therefore not rational) provided that the sum of the degrees of the hypersurfaces…

A result of Beauville states that with a few positive characterstic exceptions, the smooth hyperplane sections of hypersurfaces of degree $d>2$ in projective space are not all isomorphic. We address the question of whether these sections…

We prove that a very general nonsingular conic bundle $X\rightarrow\mathbb{P}^{n-1}$ embedded in a projective vector bundle of rank $3$ over $\mathbb{P}^{n-1}$ is not stably rational if the anti-canonical divisor of $X$ is not ample and…

It is proved that the non-rationality of a generic cubic fourfold follows from a conjecture on the non-decomposability in the direct sum of non-trivial polarized Hodge structures of the polarized Hodge structure on transcendental cycles on…

Among geometrically rational surfaces, del Pezzo surfaces of degree two over a field k containing at least one point are arguably the simplest that are not known to be unirational over k. Looking for k-rational curves on these surfaces, we…

Linearly projecting smooth projective varieties provides a method of obtaining hypersurfaces birational to the original varieties. We show that in low dimension, the resulting hypersurfaces only have Du Bois singularities. Moreover, we…

In projective dimension growth results, one bounds the number of rational points of height at most $H$ on an irreducible hypersurface in $\mathbb P^n$ of degree $d>3$ by $C(n)d^2 H^{n-1}(\log H)^{M(n)}$, where the quadratic dependence in…

Let $X \subset \mathbf{P}_{\mathbf{Q}}^{n-1}$ be a cubic hypersurface cut out by the vanishing of a non-degenerate rational cubic form in $n$ variables. Let $N(X,B)$ denote the number of rational points on $X$ of height at most $B$. In this…

The degree of irrationality of a smooth projective variety $X$ is the minimal degree of a dominant rational map $X\dashrightarrow \mathbb{P}^{\dim X}$. We show that if an abelian surface $A$ over $\mathbb{C}$ is such that the image of the…