Related papers: On Teissier's example of an equisingularity class …
We classify the singularities of a surface ruled by conics: they are rational double points of type $A_n$ or $D_n$. This is proved by showing that they arise from a precise series of blow-ups of a suitable surface geometrically ruled by…
We consider a conjectured topological inequality for the number of equisingular moduli of a rational surface singularity, and prove it in some natural special cases. When the resolution dual graph is "sufficiently negative" (in a precise…
We show that it is possible to utilize the Hirzebruch-Milnor classes of projective hypersurfaces in the classical sense to detect higher du Bois or rational singularities only in some special cases. We also give several remarks clarifying…
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 $\overline{\rho}: G_{\mathbf{Q}} \rightarrow {\rm GSp}_4(\mathbf{F}_3)$ be a continuous Galois representation with cyclotomic similitude character -- or, what turns out to be equivalent, the Galois representation associated to the…
Ch\^atelet surfaces provide a rich source of geometrically rational surfaces which do not always satisfy the Hasse principle. Restricting attention to a special class of Ch\^atelet surfaces, we investigate the frequency that such…
Serre famously showed that almost all plane conics over $\mathbb{Q}$ have no rational point. We investigate versions of this over global function fields, focusing on a specific family of conics over $\mathbb{F}_2(t)$ which illustrates new…
We give the first examples of derived equivalences between varieties defined over non-closed fields where one has a rational point and the other does not. We begin with torsors over Jacobians of curves over Q and F_q(t), and conclude with a…
If a smooth, geometrically rational surface over a finite field is not rational over that field, then over some finite extension of that field the Brauer group of the surface is nonzero. In particular such a surface is not stably rational.…
We give examples of smooth $\k$-unirational line-free quartic hypersurfaces over a non algebraically closed field $\k$. Unlike other methods of proving unirationality, our method does not rely on existence of linear spaces on quartics.
We produce examples of complex algebraic surfaces with isolated singularities such that these singularities are not metrically conic, i.e. the germs of the surfaces near singular points are not bi-Lipschitz equivalent, with respect to the…
Using quantum representations of mapping class groups we prove that profinite completions of Burnside-type surface group quotients are not virtually prosolvable, in general. Further, we construct infinitely many finite simple characteristic…
In an unpublished lecture note, J. Brian\c{c}on observed that if $\{f_t\}$ is a family of isolated complex hypersurface singularities such that the Newton boundary of $f_t$ is independent of $t$ and $f_t$ is non-degenerate, then the…
By a theorem of Suslin, a Tor-unital (not necessarily unital) ring satisfies excision in algebraic K-theory. We give a new and direct proof of Suslin's result based on an exact sequence of categories of perfect modules. In fact, we prove a…
We explore some equisingularity criteria in one parameter families of generically reduced curves. We prove the equivalence between Whitney regularity and Zariski's discriminant criterion. We prove that topological triviality implies…
We prove using jet schemes that the zero loci of the moment maps for the quivers with one vertex and at least two loops have rational singularities. This implies that the spaces of representations of the fundamental group of a compact…
We study the sums of squares on cylinders of the form $X \times \mathbb{A}_K$ for a (weakly) factorial curve $C$. We prove the equality of the Pythagoras numbers of the ring of regular functions on the cylinder with that of the field of…
For a rigid tensor abelian category $T$ over a field $k$ we introduce a notion of a normal quotient $q:T\to Q$. In case $T$ is a Tannaka category, our notion is equivalent to Milne's notion of a normal quotient. More precisely, if $T$ is…
We prove the non-rationality of a double cover of $\mathbb{P}^{n}$ branched over a hypersurface $F\subset\mathbb{P}^{n}$ of degree $2n$ having isolated singularities such that $n\ge 4$ and every singular points of the hypersurface $F$ is…
We generalize results by Wakabayashi and Orevkov about rational cuspidal curves on the projective plane to that on $\mathbb{Q}$-homology projective planes. It turns out that the result is exactly the same as the projective plane case under…