Related papers: Unirationality of hypersurfaces via highly tangent…

A very general hypersurface of dimension $n$ and degree $d$ in complex projective space is rational if $d \leq 2$, but is expected to be irrational for all $n, d \geq 3$. Hypersurfaces in weighted projective space with degree small relative…

This article proves hypersurfaces of degree d in projective n-space are "rationally simply-connected" if $d^2 \leq n$. In a forthcoming paper, de Jong and I prove a slightly weaker result when $d^2 \leq n+1$.

We study various measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree in projective space and other varieties. These include the least degree of a rational covering of projective space, and the minimal gonality of a covering family…

We show that the complement of a degree $d$ hypersurface in a projective complete intersection, whose defining equations have degrees strictly larger than $d$, has a rational connectivity higher than expected. The key new feature is that a…

Let $Y$ be a smooth, projective curve of genus $g\geq 1$ over the complex numbers. Let $H^0_{d,A}(Y)$ be the Hurwitz space which parametrizes coverings $p:X \to Y$ of degree $d$, simply branched in $n=2e$ points, with monodromy group equal…

Let $F(x_1,...,x_n)$ be a form of degree $d\geq 2$, which produces a geometrically irreducible hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^{n-1}$. This paper is concerned with the number of rational points on F=0 which have height at most $B$. Whenever…

We prove that a complete intersection of $c$ very general hypersurfaces of degree at least two in $N$-dimensional complex projective space is not ruled (and therefore not rational) provided that the sum of the degrees of the hypersurfaces…

Using Voisin's method we prove that a very general hypersurface of degree at least 4 in complex projective space of dimension 6, 7, 8 or 9 is not stably rational and so, in particular, not rational. We obtain the same conclusion for the…

In this note, we study various measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces in projective spaces which were recently proposed by Bastianelli, De Poi, Ein, Lazarsfeld and Ullery. In particular, we answer the question raised by Bastianelli…

Building on work of Segre and Koll'ar on cubic hypersurfaces, we construct over imperfect fields of characteristic p\geq 3 particular hypersurfaces of degree p, which show that geometrically rational schemes that are regular and whose…

For a hypersurface in a projective space, we consider the set of pairs of a point and a line in the projective space such that the line intersects the hypersurface at the point with a fixed multiplicity. We prove that this set of pairs…

We prove that every smooth complete intersection X defined by s hypersurfaces of degree d_1, ... , d_s in a projective space of dimension d_1 + ... + d_s is birationally superrigid if 5s +1 is at most 2(d_1 + ... + d_s + 1)/sqrt{d_1...d_s}.…

Following an idea of Ciliberto we show that double covers of projective r-space branched over an hypersurface of degree 2d are unirational provided r is sufficiently big with respect to d.

We study rational curves on general Fano hypersurfaces in projective space, mostly by degenerating the hypersurface along with its ambient projective space to reducible varieties. We prove results on existence of low-degree rational curves…

In this paper we study the degrees of irrationality of hypersurfaces of large degree in a complex projective variety. We show that the maps computing the degrees of irrationality of these hypersurfaces factor through rational fibrations of…

Let $X$ be a smooth projective hypersurface defined over $\mathbb{Q}$. We provide new bounds for rational points of bounded height on $X$. In particular, we show that if $X$ is a smooth projective hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^n$ with $n\geq…

We establish the sharp estimate <<_d N^{2/d} for the number of rational points of height at most N on an irreducible projective curve of degree d. We deduce this from a result for general hypersurfaces that is sensitive to the coefficients…

We compute some numerical invariants of the lines on hyperplane sections of a smooth cubic threefold over complex numbers. We also prove that for any smooth hypersurface $X\subset \mathbb P^{n+1}$ of degree $d$ over an algebraically closed…

It is well known since Noether that the gonality of a smooth plane curve of degree d>3 is d-1. Given a k-dimensional complex projective variety X, the most natural extension of gonality is probably the degree of irrationality, that is the…

Let $X$ be an arbitrary smooth hypersurface in $\mathbb{C} \mathbb{P}^n$ of degree $d$. We prove the de Jong-Debarre Conjecture for $n \geq 2d-4$: the space of lines in $X$ has dimension $2n-d-3$. We also prove an analogous result for…