Related papers: Stable rationality of quadric and cubic surface bu…

Let $\Bbbk$ be any field of characteristic zero, $X$ be a cubic surface in $\mathbb{P}^3_{\Bbbk}$ and $G$ be a group acting on $X$. We show that if $X(\Bbbk) \ne \varnothing$ and $G$ is not trivial and not a group of order $3$ acting in a…

We consider the question whether a real threefold X fibred into quadric surfaces over the real projective line is stably rational (over R) if the topological space X(R) is connected. We give a counterexample. When all geometric fibres are…

For $X$ a smooth cubic threefold we study the Pl\"ucker embedding of the Fano surface of lines $S$ of $X$. We prove that if $X$ is general then the minimal gonality of a covering family of curves of $S$ is four and that this happens for a…

The existence of stable ACM vector bundles of high rank on algebraic varieties is a challenging problem. In this paper, we study stable Ulrich bundles (that is, stable ACM bundles whose corresponding module has the maximum number of…

We investigate the universal Severi variety of rational curves on K3 surfaces, which parametrises irreducible rational curves in a fixed class on varying K3 surfaces of fixed genus. We investigate the conjecuted irreducibility of this space…

We show under the assumption that the Tate-Shafarevich group of any elliptic curve over the rational numbers is finite that the cubic surface $x_1^3 + p_1p_2x_2^3 + p_2p_3x_3^3 + p_3p_1x_4^3 = 0$ has a rational point, where $p_1, p_2$ and…

Let $X$ be an $(8k+i)$-dimensional pathwise connected $CW$-complex with $i=1$ or $2$ and $k\ge0$, $\xi$ be a real vector bundle over $X$. Suppose that $\xi$ admits a stable complex structure over the $8k$-skeleton of $X$. Then we get that…

Let $X_4\subset\mathbb{P}^{n+1}$ be a quartic hypersurface of dimension $n\geq 4$ over an infinite field $k$. We show that if either $X_4$ contains a linear subspace $\Lambda$ of dimension $h\geq \max\{2,\dim(\Lambda\cap…

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…

We show that a very general hypersurface of degree d at least 4 and dimension at most $(d+1)2^{d-4}$ over a field of characteristic different from 2 does not admit a decomposition of the diagonal; hence, it is neither stably nor retract…

We prove the failure of stable rationality for many smooth well formed weighted hypersurfaces of dimension at least 3. It is in particular proved that a very general smooth well formed Fano weighted hypersurface of index one is not stably…

For a regular pair $(X,Y)$ of schemes of pure codimension 1 on which 2 is invertible, we consider quadric bundles on $X$ which are nondegenerate on $X-Y$, but are minimally degenerate on $Y$. We give a formula for the behaviour of the…

We study various measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree in projective space and other varieties. These include the least degree of a rational covering of projective space, and the minimal gonality of a covering family…

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…

We study the surface $\bar{S}$ parametrizing cuboids: it is defined by the equations relating the sides, face diagonals and long diagonal of a rectangular box. It is an open problem whether a `rational box' exists, i.e., a rectangular box…

We prove analogues of several well-known results concerning rational morphisms between quadrics for the class of so-called quasilinear $p$-hypersurfaces. These hypersurfaces are nowhere smooth over the base field, so many of the geometric…

Let E be a stable rank 2 vector bundle on a smooth quadric threefold Q in the projective 4-space P. We show that the hyperplanes H in P for which the restriction of E to the hyperplane section of Q by H is not stable form, in general, a…

We study the unirationality of surface conic bundles $\pi\colon S\to\mathbb P^1$ over an arbitrary field $k$ with discriminant degree $d_S=8$, the first case beyond the del Pezzo range. We divide these surfaces in four families and produce…

The moduli space of parabolic bundles with fixed determinant over a smooth curve of genus greater than one is proved to be rational whenever one of the multiplicities associated to the quasi-parabolic structure is equal to one. It follows…

Motivated by the question of rationality of cubic fourfolds, we show that a cubic X has an associated K3 surface in the sense of Hassett if and only if the variety F of lines on X is birational to a moduli space of sheaves on a K3 surface,…