Related papers: Irrationality of the general smooth quartic $3$-fo…
Given a polarized variety $(X,L)$, we construct and study projections of low degree $ X\dashrightarrow \mathbb{P}(H^0(L^\vee)) \dashrightarrow \mathbb P ^n $ using the associated kernel bundles. As an application, we can show that the…
It is a conjecture of Koll\'ar that a variety $X$ with rational singularities in some open subvariety $U$ has a rationalification; that is, a proper, birational morphism $f: Y \rightarrow X$ such that $Y$ has rational singularities, and…
We prove that a very general double cover of the projective four-space, ramified in a quartic threefold, is not stably rational.
We prove that the generic point of a Hilbert modular four-fold is not a Jacobian. The proof uses degeneration techniques and is independent of properties of the mapping class group used in preceding papers on locally symmetric subvarieties…
We examine the existence of rational divisors on modular curves of $\mathcal{D}$-elliptic sheaves and on Atkin-Lehner quotients of these curves over local fields. Using a criterion of Poonen and Stoll, we show that in infinitely many cases…
We describe intermediate Jacobians of Gushel-Mukai varieties $X$ of dimensions 3 or 5: if $A$ is the Lagrangian space associated with $X$, we prove that the intermediate Jacobian of $X$ is isomorphic to the Albanese variety of the canonical…
Let k be a field of characteristic different from 2. There can be an obstruction for an indecomposable principally polarized abelian threefold (A,a) over k to be a Jacobian over k. It can be computed in terms of the rationality of the…
In this paper we present a new method to show that a principal homogeneous space of the Jacobian of a curve of genus two is nontrivial. The idea is to exhibit a Brauer-Manin obstruction to the existence of rational points on a quotient of…
Let $\Theta$ be a symmetric theta divisor on an indecomposable principally polarized complex abelian variety $X$. The linear system $|2\Theta |$ defines a morphism $K:X\ra |2\Theta |^*$, whose image is the Kummer variety $K(X)$ of $X$. When…
We consider the generalized Jacobian $\widetilde{J}$ of the modular curve $X_0(N)$ of level $N$ with respect to a reduced divisor consisting of all cusps. Supposing $N$ is square free, we explicitly determine the structure of the…
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 study the moduli space of pairs consisting of a smooth cubic surface and a smooth hyperplane section, via a Hodge theoretic period map due to Laza, Pearlstein, and the second named author. The construction associates to such a pair a…
The Torelli group of a compact non-orientable Klein surface is the subgroup of the modular group consisting of the mapping classes that act trivially on the first homology group of the surface. We prove that if a surface has genus at least…
We pose some questions about spaces parametrizing rational curves on rationally connected varieties. We give a partial answer for cubic threefolds. Many of our results were previously proved by Iliev, Markushevich and Tikhimirov by…
In this text we prove that if an abelian variety $A$ admits an embedding into the Jacobian of a smooth projective curve $C$, and if we consider $\Theta_A$ to be the divisor $\Theta_C\cap A$, where $\Theta_C$ denotes the theta divisor of…
A central problem in Diophantine geometry is to uniformly bound the number of $K$-rational points on a smooth curve $X/K$ in terms of $K$ and its genus $g$. A recent paper by Stoll proved uniform bounds for the number of $K$-rational points…
We construct two small resolutions of singularities of the Coble fourfold (the double cover of the four-dimensional projective space branched over the Igusa quartic). We use them to show that all $S_6$-invariant three-dimensional quartics…
We give a description of the intermediate Jacobian fibration attached to a general complex cubic fourfold $X$ containing a plane as a Lagrangian subfibration of a moduli space of torsion sheaves on the K3 surface associated to $X$ up to a…
We describe a method to determine all the isomorphism classes of principal polarizations of the modular abelian surfaces $A_f$ with quaternionic multiplication attached to a normalized newform $f$ without complex multiplication. We include…
In this paper the ubiquity of the Igusa quartic $B \subset \mathbb P^4$ shows up again, this time related to the Prym map $\mathfrak p : \mathcal R_6 \to \mathcal A_5$. We introduce the moduli space $\mathcal X$ of those quartic threefolds…