Related papers: Affine cones over cubic surfaces are flexible in c…

We prove that the action of the special automorphism group on affine cones over del Pezzo surfaces of degree 4 and 5 is infinitely transitive.

We address the following question: Determine the affine cones over smooth projective varieties which admit an action of a connected algebraic group different from the standard C*-action by scalar matrices and its inverse action. We show in…

We provide a new criterion for flexibility of cones over varieties covered by flexible affine varieties. We apply this criterion to prove flexibility of affine cones over secant varieties of Segre--Veronese embeddings and over certain Fano…

In a previous paper we established that for any del Pezzo surface Y of degree at least 4, the affine cone X over Y embedded via a pluri-anticanonical linear system admits an effective Ga-action. In particular, the group Aut(X) is infinite…

We show that the affine cones over any Fano-Mukai fourfold of genus 10 are flexible; in particular, the automorphism group of such a cone acts highly transitively outside the vertex. Furthermore, any Fano-Mukai fourfold of genus 10, with…

We completely determine the existence of anticanonical polar cylinders in quasi-smooth log del Pezzo surfaces of index one.

We construct examples of normal affine varieties X of dimension greater than or equal to 4 such that the group of special automorphisms SAut(X) acts on X with an open orbit O and the complement X\O has codimension one.

We construct a smooth rational affine surface S with finite automorphism group but with the property that the group of automorphisms of the cylinder SxA^2 acts infinitely transitively on the complement of a closed subset of codimension at…

We show that the affine cones over a general Fano-Mukai fourfold of genus $g=7$, $8$ and $9$ are flexible. Equivalently, there is an infinitely transitive action of the special automorphism group on such affine cones. In particular, any…

We classify all possible automorphism groups of smooth cubic surfaces over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic. As an intermediate step we also classify automorphism groups of quartic del Pezzo surfaces. We show that…

Generic flexibility of affine cones over Fano varieties is a subject of active study recently. For del Pezzo surfaces the question is completely studied in degree at least 3, and partially in degree 2. We present a Sagemath module that…

We give two characterizations of cones over ellipsoids. Let $C$ be a closed pointed convex linear cone in a finite-dimensional real vector space. We show that $C$ is a cone over an ellipsoid if and only if the affine span of $\partial C…

This is a survey on the automorphism groups in various classes of affine algebraic surfaces and the algebraic group actions on such surfaces. Being infinite-dimensional, these automorphism groups share some important features of algebraic…

We prove flexibility of two families of affine varieties: the complement in $\mathbb{P}^n$ of a projective quadric of rank at least three and affine cones over a smooth complete intersection of two quadrics in $\mathbb{P}^{n + 2}$, $n \ge…

On del Pezzo surfaces, we study effective ample $\mathbb{R}$-divisors such that the complements of their supports are isomorphic to $\mathbb{A}^1$-bundles over smooth affine curves.

We give two characterizations of cones over ellipsoids in real normed vector spaces. Let $C$ be a closed convex cone with nonempty interior such that $C$ has a bounded section of codimension $1$. We show that $C$ is a cone over an ellipsoid…

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 prove that, for a K3 surface in characteristic p > 2, the automorphism group acts on the nef cone with a rational polyhedral fundamental domain and on the nodal classes with finitely many orbits. As a consequence, for any non-negative…

We construct families of smooth affine surfaces with pairwise non isomorphic A 1-cylinders but whose A 2-cylinders are all isomorphic. These arise as complements of cuspidal hyperplane sections of smooth projective cubic surfaces.

We prove that the affine cone over a general primitively polarised K3 surface of genus g is smoothable if and only if g\le 10 or g=12. We also give several examples of singularities with special behaviour, such as surfaces whose affine cone…