Related papers: Rationality of singular cubic threefolds over $\ma…

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 study rational curves on algebraic varieties, especially on normal affine varieties endowed with a $\C^*$-action. For varieties with an isolated singularity, we show that the presence of sufficiently many rational curves outside the…

We study Calabi-Yau manifolds defined over finite fields. These manifolds have parameters, which now also take values in the field and we compute the number of rational points of the manifold as a function of the parameters. The intriguing…

We introduce new obstructions to rationality for geometrically rational threefolds arising from the geometry of curves and their cycle maps.

This note (which makes no claim to novelty) presents a proof of the separable rational connectedness of smooth cubic hypersurfaces, in any characteristic, by showing how to explicitly construct very free curves (of degree 3) on them. -----…

The main purpose of this paper is twofold. We first want to analyze in details the meaningful geometric aspect of the method introduced in the previous paper [12], concerning regularity of families of irreducible, nodal "curves" on a…

We exhibit new examples of rational cubic fourfolds, parametrized by a countably infinite union of codimension-two subvarieties in the moduli space. Our examples are fibered in sextic del Pezzo surfaces over the projective plane; they are…

Let $(Z,o)$ be a three-dimensional terminal singularity of type $cA/r$. We prove that all exceptional divisors over $o$ with discrepancies $\le 1$ are rational.

We prove a structure theorem for non-isomorphic endomorphisms of weak Q-Fano threefolds, or more generally for threefolds with big anti-canonical divisor. Also provided is a criterion for a fibred rationally connected threefold to be…

A variety is unirational if it is dominated by a rational variety. A variety is rationally connected if two general points can be joined by a rational curve. This paper aims to show that the two notions can cooperate and, building on…

We give an explicit description of cubic rings over a discrete valuation ring, as well as a description of all ideals of such rings.

In this paper, we study tropicalisations of singular surfaces in toric threefolds. We completely classify singular tropical surfaces of maximal-dimensional type, show that they can generically have only finitely many singular points, and…

We prove a general specialization theorem which implies stable irrationality for a wide class of quadric surface bundles over rational surfaces. As an application, we solve with the exception of two cases, the stable rationality problem for…

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…

Let $C$ be an irreducible projective plane curve in the complex projective space ${\mathbb{P}}^2$. The classification of such curves, up to the action of the automorphism group $PGL(3,{\mathbb{C}})$ on ${\mathbb{P}}^2$, is a very difficult…

Let k be a finite field with characteristic exceeding 3. We prove that the space of rational curves of fixed degree on any smooth cubic hypersurface over k with dimension at least 11 is irreducible and of the expected dimension.

We show that even dimensional Fermat cubic hypersurfaces are rational over any field of characteristic different from three by producing explicit rational parametrizations given by polynomials of low degree. As a byproduct of our…

By the famous ADE classification rational double points are simple. Rational triple points are also simple. We conjecture that the simple normal surface singularities are exactly those rational singularities, whose resolution graph can be…

We study the singularities of the projective dual variety.

A well known conjecture asserts that a cubic fourfold X is rational if it has a cohomologically associated K3 surface. G.Ouchi proved that if X admits a finite group G of symplectic automorphisms, whose order is different from 2, then X has…