Related papers: Rationality does not specialize among terminal fou…

Serre famously showed that almost all plane conics over $\mathbb{Q}$ have no rational point. We investigate versions of this over global function fields, focusing on a specific family of conics over $\mathbb{F}_2(t)$ which illustrates new…

We show that in every dimension greater than or equal to 4, there exist compact Kaehler manifolds which do not have the homotopy type of projective complex manifolds. Thus they a fortiori are not deformation equivalent to a projective…

In this sequel to Resolution except for minimal singularities I, we find the smallest class of singularities in four variables with which we necessarily end up if we resolve singularities except for normal crossings. The main new feature is…

We give an explicit expression for the (finitely) flat remainder after analytic normal form reduction of a family of planar saddles of diffeomorphisms or vector fields. We distinguish between a rational or irrational ratio of the moduli of…

We show the cohomological monodromy for the universal family of smooth cubic threefolds does not factor through the genus five mapping class group. This gives a geometric group theory perspective on the well-known irrationality of cubic…

If $X$ is a projective, geometrically irreducible variety defined over a finite field $\F_q$, such that it is smooth and its Chow group of 0-cycles fulfills base change, i.e. $CH_0(X\times_{\F_q}\bar{\F_q(X)})=\Q$, then the second author's…

We generalize Laurent monomials to toric quasifolds, a special class of highly singular spaces that extend simplicial toric varieties to the nonrational setting.

We study weighted Fano fourfolds of K3 type realized as hypersurfaces in weighted projective spaces. Under the additional assumption that the singular locus has dimension at most one, we prove that only finitely many such families exist. We…

We prove the $W\mathcal{O}$-rationality of klt threefolds and the rational chain connectedness of klt Fano threefolds over a perfect field of characteristic $p>5$. As a consequence, any klt Fano threefold over a finite field has a rational…

We discuss whether finiteness properties of a profinite group $G$ can be deduced from the probabilistic zeta function $P_G(s)$. In particular we prove that if $P_G(s)$ is rational and all but finitely many nonabelian composition factors of…

We show that a finite type duality group of dimension $d>2$ is the fundamental group of a $(d+3)$-manifold with rationally acyclic universal cover. We use this to find closed manifolds with rationally acyclic universal cover and some…

Let $X$ be a cubic fourfold in $P^5_{C}$. We prove that, assuming the Hodge conjecture for the product $S \times S$, where $S$ is a complex surface, and the finite dimensionality of the Chow motive $h(S)$, there are at most a countable…

We consider finite extensions of the rationals which are unramified except for at 2 and infinity. We show there are no such extensions of degrees 9 through 15.

Let $X,Y$ be two irreducible subvarieties of the projective space $\mathbb{P}^n$, and $d\geq 1$ an integer number. The main result of this paper is an algorithm to construct {\bf explicitly}, in terms of $d$ and the ideals defining $X$ and…

The global geometry of the moduli spaces of higher spin curves and their birational classification is largely unknown for g >= 2 and r > 2. Using quite related geometric constructions, we almost complete the picture of the known results in…

We apply the specialization technique based on the decomposition of the diagonal to find an explicit example over $\mathbb{Q}$ of a quadric and cubic hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^6$ such that their intersection is a smooth stably irrational…

The aim of the present paper is to prove the rationality of the universal family of polarized $ K3 $ surfaces of degree 14. This is achieved by identifying it with the moduli space of cubic fourfolds plus the data of a quartic scroll. The…

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,…

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…

We study the rationality properties of the moduli space $\mathcal{A}_g$ of principally polarised abelian $g$-folds over $\mathbb{Q}$ and apply the results to arithmetic questions. In particular we show that any principally polarised abelian…