Works by O'Grady allow to associate to a 2-dimensional Gushel-Mukai variety, which is a K3 surface, a double EPW sextic. We characterize the K3 surfaces whose associated double EPW sextic is smooth. As a consequence, we are able to produce symplectic actions on some families of smooth double EPW sextics which are hyper-Kähler manifolds. We also provide bounds for the automorphism group of Gushel-Mukai varieties in dimension 2 and higher.
In analogy to the case of cubic fourfolds, we discuss the conditions under which the double cover $\tilde{Y}_A$ of the EPW sextic hypersurface associated to a Gushel-Mukai fourfold is birationally equivalent to a moduli space of (twisted) stable sheaves on a K3 surface. In particular, we prove that $\tilde{Y}_A$ is birational to the Hilbert scheme of two points on a K3 surface if and only if the Gushel-Mukai fourfold is Hodge-special with discriminant $d$ such that the negative Pell equation $\mathcal{P}_{d/2}(-1)$ is solvable in $\mathbb{Z}$.
A locally complete family of projective symplectic 4-folds is provided by natural double covers of Eisenbud-Popescu-Walter (EPW) sextic hypersurfaces in projective 5-space. The dual of an EPW sextic is another EPW sextic, thus to a double EPW sextic X we may associate a "dual" double EPW sextic X^{\vee}. We show how to obtain the Hodge structure on H^2(X^{\vee}) from that on H^2(X); it turns out that they are isomorphic over the rationals but not over the integers (in general).
An EPW-sextic is a special 4-dimensional hypersurfaces of degree 6 which comes equipped with a double cover which generically is a Hyperkaehler 4-fold deformation equivalent to the Hilbert square of a K3 surface. The family of EPW-sextics is analogous to the family of cubic 4-fold hypersurfaces, more precisely double EPW-sextics are analogous to varieties of lines on cubic 4-folds. This first paper in a series on moduli and periods of double EPW-sextics is mainly concerned with the classification of EPW-sextics which are analogous to cubic 4-folds whose singular locus has strictly positive dim…
Motivated by the Beauville-Voisin conjecture about Chow rings of powers of $K3$ surfaces, we consider a similar conjecture for Chow rings of powers of EPW sextics. We prove part of this conjecture for the very special EPW sextic studied by Donten-Bury et alii. We also prove some other results concerning the Chow groups of this very special EPW sextic, and of certain related hyperkähler fourfolds.
EPW-sextics are special 4-dimensional sextic hypersurfaces (with 20 moduli) which come equipped with a double cover. We analyze the double cover of EPW-sextics parametrized by a certain prime divisor in the moduli space. We associate to the generic sextic parametrized by that divisor a K3 surface of genus 6 and we show that the double epw sextic is a contraction of the Hilbert square of the K3. This result has two consequences. First it gives a new proof of the following result of ours: smooth double EPW-sextics form a locally complete family of hyperkaehler projective deformations of the Hilb…
A conjecture of Beauville and Voisin states that for an irreducible symplectic variety X, any polynomial relation between classes of divisors and the Chern classes of X which holds in cohomology already holds in the Chow groups. We verify the conjecture for a very general double EPW sextic.
The Chow rings of hyperKähler varieties are conjectured to have a particularly rich structure. In this paper, we focus on the locally complete family of double EPW sextics and establish some properties of their Chow rings. First we prove a Beauville-Voisin type theorem for zero-cycles on double EPW sextics; precisely, we show that the codimension-4 part of the subring of the Chow ring of a double EPW sextic generated by divisors, the Chern classes and codimension-2 cycles invariant under the anti-symplectic covering involution has rank one. Second, for double EPW sextics birational to the Hilb…
O'Grady showed that certain special sextics in $\mathbb{P}^5$ called EPW sextics admit smooth double covers with a holomorphic symplectic structure. We propose another perspective on these symplectic manifolds, by showing that they can be constructed from the Hilbert schemes of conics on Fano fourfolds of degree ten. As applications, we construct families of Lagrangian surfaces in these symplectic fourfolds, and related integrable systems whose fibers are intermediate Jacobians.
This note is about the Hilbert square $X=S^{[2]}$, where $S$ is a general $K3$ surface of degree $10$, and the anti-symplectic birational involution $ι$ of $X$ constructed by O'Grady. The main result is that the action of $ι$ on certain pieces of the Chow groups of $X$ is as expected by Bloch's conjecture. Since $X$ is birational to a double EPW sextic $X^\prime$, this has consequences for the Chow ring of the EPW sextic $Y\subset{\mathbb{P}}^5$ associated to $X^\prime$.
We study the indeterminacy locus of the period map for double EPW-sextics. We recall that double EPW-sextics are parametrized by lagrangian subspaces of the third wedge-product of a 6-dimensional complex vector-space. The indeterminacy locus is contained in the set of lagrangians containing a decomposable vector. The projectivization of the 3-dimensional support of such a decomposable vector contains a degeneracy subscheme which is either all of the plane or a sextic curve. We show that the period map is regular on any lagrangian A such that for all decomposables in A the corresponding degener…
We prove that the Hilbert square $S^{[2]}$ of a very general primitively polarized K3 surface S of degree $d(n) = 2(4n^2 + 8n + 5)$, $n \geq 1$ is birational to a double Eisenbud-Popescu-Walter sextic. Our result implies a positive answers, in the case when $r$ is even, to a conjecture of O'Grady: On the Hilbert square of a very general K3 surface of genus $r^2 + 2$, $r \geq 1$ there is an antisymplectic involution. We explicitly give this involution on $S^{[2]}$ in term of the corresponding EPW polarization on it.
We prove that the invariant locus of the involution associated to a general double EPW sextic is a constant surface and introduce a filtration on $\CH_1$ of a Gushel-Mukai fourfold. We verify the sheaf/cycle correspondence for sheaves supported on low degree rational curves, parallel to the cubic fourfolds case.
We show that the Hilbert scheme of two points on the Vinberg $K3$ surface has a 2:1 map onto a very symmetric EPW sextic $Y$ in $\mathbb{P}^5$. The fourfold $Y$ is singular along $60$ planes, $20$ of which form a complete family of incident planes. This solves a problem of Morin and O'Grady and establishes that $20$ is the maximal cardinality of such a family of planes. Next, we show that this Hilbert scheme is birationally isomorphic to the Kummer type IHS fourfold $X_0$ constructed in [DW]. We find that $X_0$ is also related to the Debarre-Varley abelian fourfold.
We study the GIT quotient of the symplectic grassmannian parametrizing lagrangian subspaces of \bigwedge^3{\mathbb C}^6 by the natural action of SL_6, call it M. This is a compactification of the moduli space of smooth double EPW-sextics. We determine the stable points, the irreducible components of the GIT boundary and their dimensions. There are strong analogies with the moduli space of cubic 4-folds: we prove a result which is analogous to a theorem of Laza stating that cubic 4-folds with simple singularities are stable. Our final goal (not achieved in the present paper) is to understand th…
We perform a systematic study of Gushel-Mukai varieties---quadratic sections of linear sections of cones over the Grassmannian Gr(2,5). This class of varieties includes Clifford general curves of genus 6, Brill-Noether general polarized K3 surfaces of genus 6, prime Fano threefolds of genus 6, and their higher-dimensional analogues. We establish an intrinsic characterization of normal Gushel-Mukai varieties in terms of their excess conormal sheaves, which leads to a new proof of the classification theorem of Gushel and Mukai. We give a description of isomorphism classes of Gushel-Mukai varieti…
We construct an explicit complex smooth Fano threefold with Picard number 1, index 1, and degree 10 (also known as a Gushel-Mukai threefold) and prove that it is not rational by showing that its intermediate Jacobian has a faithful $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbf{F}_{11}) $-action. Along the way, we construct Gushel-Mukai varieties of various dimensions with rather large (finite) automorphism groups. The starting point of all these constructions is an Eisenbud-Popescu-Walter sextic with a faithful $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbf{F}_{11}) $-action discovered by the second author in 2013.
Beauville and Donagi proved in 1985 that the primitive middle cohomology of a smooth complex cubic fourfold and the primitive second cohomology of its variety of lines, a smooth hyperkähler fourfold, are isomorphic as polarized integral Hodge structures. We prove analogous statements for smooth complex Gushel-Mukai varieties of dimension 4 (resp. 6), i.e., smooth dimensionally transverse intersections of the cone over the Grassmannian Gr(2,5), a quadric, and two hyperplanes (resp. of the cone over Gr(2,5) and a quadric). The associated hyperkähler fourfold is in both cases a smooth double cove…
We explain a general construction of double covers of quadratic degeneracy loci and Lagrangian intersection loci based on reflexive sheaves. We relate the double covers of quadratic degeneracy loci to the Stein factorizations of the relative Hilbert schemes of linear spaces of the corresponding quadric fibrations. We give a criterion for these double covers to be nonsingular. As applications of these results, we show that the double covers of the EPW sextics obtained by our construction give O'Grady's double EPW sextics and that an analogous construction gives Iliev-Kapustka-Kapustka-Ranestad'…
Eisenbud Popescu and Walter have constructed certain special 4-dimensional sextic hypersurfaces as Lagrangian degeneracy loci. We prove that the natural double cover of a generic EPW-sextic is a deformation of the Hilbert square of a K3-surface and that the family of such varieties is locally complete for deformations that keep the hyperplane class of type (1,1) - thus we get an example similar to that (discovered by Beauville and Donagi) of the Fano variety of lines on a cubic 4-fold. Conversely suppose that X is an irreducible symplectic 4-fold numerically equivalent to the Hilbert square of…
Let X be a holomorphic symplectic fourfold such that b_2=23 and i a symplectic involution of X . The fixed locus F of i is a smooth symplectic submanifold of X; we show that F contains at least 12 isolated points and 1 smooth surface. We conjecture that F is made of 28 isolated fixed points and 1 K3 surface and we provide evidences for the conjecture in some examples, as the Hilbert scheme of a K3 surface, the Fano variety of a cubic in P^5 and the double cover of an EPW sextic.
In previous work, we have introduced a program aimed at studying the birational geometry of locally symmetric varieties of Type IV associated to moduli of certain projective varieties of K3 type. In particular, a concrete goal of our program is to understand the relationship between GIT and Baily-Borel compactifications for quartic K3 surfaces, K3's which are double covers of a smooth quadric surface, and double EPW sextics. In our first paper (arXiv:1607.01324), based on arithmetic considerations, we have given conjectural decompositions into simple birational transformations of the period ma…
