Related papers: Classifying Fano 4-folds with a rational fibration…

We study (smooth, complex) Fano 4-folds X with Picard number rho(X)>6. We show that if rho(X)>9, then X is a product of del Pezzo surfaces, thus improving recent results by the author and by the author and S.A. Secci; the statement is now…

We study (smooth, complex) Fano 4-folds X having a rational contraction of fiber type, that is, a rational map X-->Y that factors as a sequence of flips followed by a contraction of fiber type. The existence of such a map is equivalent to…

Let X be a smooth complex Fano 4-fold. We show that if X has a small elementary contraction, then the Picard number rho(X) of X is at most 12. This result is based on a careful study of the geometry of X, on which we give a lot of…

Let X be a smooth, complex Fano 4-fold, and rho(X) its Picard number. If X contains a prime divisor D with rho(X)-rho(D)>2, then either X is a product of del Pezzo surfaces, or rho(X)=5 or 6. In this setting, we completely classify the case…

Let X be a smooth, complex Fano 4-fold, and rho(X) its Picard number. We show that if rho(X)>12, then X is a product of del Pezzo surfaces. The proof relies on a careful study of divisorial elementary contractions f: X->Y such that the…

In this paper we study smooth, complex Fano 4-folds X with large Picard number rho(X), with techniques from birational geometry. Our main result is that if X is isomorphic in codimension one to the blow-up of a smooth projective 4-fold Y at…

We study the birational geometry of a Fano 4-fold X from the point of view of Mori dream spaces; more precisely, we study rational contractions of X. Here a rational contraction is a rational map f: X-->Y, where Y is normal and projective,…

This note is a short survey on the Lefschetz defect, an invariant of smooth Fano varieties that has been recently introduced; it is related to the Picard number rho(X) of X, and to the Picard number of prime divisors in X. We explain the…

Let X be a smooth, complex Fano variety, and delta(X) its Lefschetz defect. It is known that if delta(X) is at least 4, then X is isomorphic to a product SxT, where dim T=dim X-2. In this paper we prove a structure theorem for the case…

Let X be a smooth complex Fano variety. We define and study 'quasi elementary' contractions of fiber type f: X -> Y. These have the property that rho(X) is at most rho(Y)+rho(F), where rho is the Picard number and F is a general fiber of f.…

Let X be a complex Fano manifold of arbitrary dimension, and D a prime divisor in X. We consider the image H of N_1(D) in N_1(X) under the natural push-forward of 1-cycles. We show that the codimension c of H in N_1(X) is at most 8.…

We find a characterization for Fano 4-folds $X$ with Lefschetz defect $\delta_{X}=3$: besides the product of two del Pezzo surfaces, they correspond to varieties admitting a conic bundle structure $f\colon X\to Y$ with…

For $n\geq 4$, let $X$ be a complex smooth Fano $n$-fold whose minimal anticanonical degree of non-free rational curves on $X$ is at least $n-2$. We classify extremal contractions of such varieties. As an application, we obtain a…

Let X be a (smooth, complex) Fano 4-fold. For any prime divisor D in X, consider the image of N_1(D) in N_1(X) under the push-forward of 1-cycles, and let c_D be its codimension in N_1(X). We define an integral invariant c_X of X as the…

A generalization of S. Mukai's conjecture says that if $X$ is a Fano $n$-fold with Picard number $\rho_X$ and pseudo-index $i_X$, then $\rho_X(i_X-1) \leq n$, with equality if and only if $X \cong (\mathbb{P}^{i_X-1})^{\rho_X}$. In this…

We study the question whether rational homogeneous spaces are rigid under Fano deformation. In other words, given any smooth connected family f:X -> Zof Fano manifolds, if one fiber is biholomorphic to a rational homogeneous space S,…

We study Fano 3-folds with Fano index 2: that is, 3-folds X with rank Pic(X) = 1, Q-factorial terminal singularities and -K_X = 2A for an ample Weil divisor A. We give a first classification of all possible Hilbert series of such polarised…

Let X be a smooth, complex Fano variety. For every prime divisor D in X, we set c(D):=dim ker(r:H^2(X,R)->H^2(D,R)), where r is the natural restriction map, and we define an invariant of X as c_X:=max{c(D)|D is a prime divisor in X}. In a…

We classify smooth Fano manifolds X with the Picard number $\rho_X \geq 3$ such that there exists an extremal ray which has a birational contraction that maps a divisor to a point.

We study a particular kind of fiber type contractions between complex, projective, smooth varieties f:X->Y, called Fano conic bundles. This means that X is a Fano variety, and every fiber of f is isomorphic to a plane conic. Denoting by…