O'Grady conjectured that the Chow group of 0-cycles of the generic fiber of the universal family over the moduli space of polarized K3 surfaces of genus g is cyclic. This so-called generalized Franchetta conjecture has been solved only for low genera where there is a Mukai model (precisely, when g<11 and g=12, 13, 16, 18, 20), by the work of Pavic--Shen--Yin. In this paper, as a non-commutative analog, we study the Franchetta property for families of special cubic fourfolds (in the sense of Hassett) and relate it to O'Grady's conjecture for K3 surfaces. Most notably, by using special cubic fourfolds of discriminant 26, we prove O'Grady's generalized Franchetta conjecture for g=14, providing the first evidence beyond Mukai models.
We prove the generalized Franchetta conjecture for the locally complete family of hyper-Kähler eightfolds constructed by Lehn-Lehn-Sorger-van Straten (LLSS). As a corollary, we establish the Beauville-Voisin conjecture for very general LLSS eightfolds. The strategy consists in reducing to the Franchetta property for relative fourth powers of cubic fourfolds, by using the recent description of LLSS eightfolds as moduli spaces of semistable objects in the Kuznetsov component of the derived category of cubic fourfolds, together with its generalization to the relative setting due to Bayer-Lahoz-Ma…
The generalized Franchetta conjecture for hyper-Kähler varieties predicts that an algebraic cycle on the universal family of certain polarized hyper-Kähler varieties is fiberwise rationally equivalent to zero if and only if it vanishes in cohomology fiberwise. We establish Franchetta-type results for certain low (Hilbert) powers of low degree K3 surfaces, for the Beauville--Donagi family of Fano varieties of lines on cubic fourfolds and its relative square, and for $0$-cycles and codimension-$2$ cycles for the Lehn--Lehn--Sorger--van Straten family of hyper-Kähler eightfolds. We also draw many…
We prove that every Hassett's Noether-Lefschetz divisor of special cubic fourfolds contains a union of three codimension-two subvarieties, parametrizing rational cubic fourfolds, in the moduli space of smooth cubic fourfolds.
We present some applications of the Macaulay2 software package SpecialFanoFourfolds, a package for working with Hodge-special cubic fourfolds and Hodge-special Gushel--Mukai fourfolds. In particular, we show how to construct new examples of such fourfolds, some of which turn out to be rational. We also describe how to calculate K3 surfaces associated with cubic or Gushel-Mukai fourfolds, which relies on an explicit unirationality of some moduli spaces of K3 surfaces.
We give an interpretation of the Fano variety of lines on a cubic fourfold and of the hyperkahler eightfold, constructed by Lehn, Lehn, Sorger and van Straten from twisted cubic curves in a cubic fourfold non containing a plane, as moduli spaces of Bridgeland stable objects in the Kuznetsov component. As a consequence, we reprove the categorical version of Torelli Theorem for cubic fourfolds, we obtain the identification of the period point of LLSvS eightfold with that of the Fano variety, and we discuss derived Torelli Theorem for cubic fourfolds.
In this paper, we study relations between automorphism groups of cubic fourfolds and Kuznetsov components. Firstly, we characterize automorphism groups of cubic fourfolds as subgroups of autoequivalence groups of Kuznetsov components using Bridgeland stability conditions. Secondly, we compare automorphism groups of cubic fourfolds with automorphism groups of their associated K3 surfaces. Thirdly, we note that the existence of a non-trivial symplectic automorphism on a cubic fourfold is related to the existence of associated K3 surfaces.
In the first part of this paper we will prove the Voevodsky's nilpotence conjecture for smooth cubic fourfolds and ordinary generic Gushel-Mukai fourfolds. Then, making use of noncommutative motives, we will prove the Voevodsky's nilpotence conjecture for generic Gushel-Mukai fourfolds containing a $τ$-plane $\G(2,3)$ and for ordinary Gushel-Mukai fourfolds containing a quintic del Pezzo surface.
We study the number of planes for four dimensional projective hypersurfaces which has so-called inductive structure. We also determine transcendental lattices for cubic fourfolds of this type.
We discuss the structure of the derived category of coherent sheaves on cubic fourfolds of three types: Pfaffian cubics, cubics containing a plane and singular cubics, and discuss its relation to the rationality of these cubics.
We describe the GIT compactification of the moduli space of cubic fourfolds, with a special emphasis on the role played by singularities. Our main result is that a cubic fourfold with only isolated simple (A-D-E) singularities is GIT stable. Conversely, with some minor exceptions, the stability for cubic fourfolds is characterized by this condition.
We extend non-emtpyness and irreducibility of Hassett divisors to the moduli spaces of $M$-polarizable cubic fourfolds for higher rank lattices $M$, which in turn provides a systematic approach for describing the irreducible components of intersection of Hassett divisors. We show that Fermat cubic fourfold is contained in every Hassett divisor, which yields a new proof of Hassett's existence theorem of special cubic fourfolds. We obtain an algorithm to determine the irreducible components of the intersection of any two Hassett divisors and we give new examples of rational cubic fourfolds. More…
We classify the polarized symplectic automorphisms of Fano varieties of smooth cubic fourfolds (equipped with the Plücker polarization) and study the fixed loci.
We classify the symplectic automorphism groups for cubic fourfolds. The main inputs are the global Torelli theorem for cubic fourfolds and the classification of the fixed-point sublattices of the Leech lattice. Among the highlights of our results, we note that there are 34 possible groups of symplectic automorphisms, with 6 maximal cases. The six maximal cases correspond to 8 non-isomorphic, and isolated in moduli, cubic fourfolds; six of them previously identified by other authors. Finally, the Fermat cubic fourfold has the largest possible order (174,960) for the automorphism group (non-nece…
We prove that a very general cubic fourfold containing a plane can be embedded into a holomorphic symplectic eightfold as a Lagrangian submanifold. We construct the desired holomorphic symplectic eightfold as a moduli space of Bridgeland stable objects in the derived category of the twisted K3 surface corresponding to the cubic fourfold containing a plane.
In this note, we give a short proof of the Torelli theorem for cubic fourfolds that relies on the global Torelli theorem for irreducible holomorphic symplectic varieties proved by Verbitsky.
We prove that cubic fourfolds in a certain 10-dimensional family have finite-dimensional motive. The proof is based on the van Geemen-Izadi construction of an algebraic Kuga-Satake correspondence for these cubic fourfolds, combined with Voisin's method of "spread". Some consequences are given.
We study lines and twisted cubics on cubic fourfolds with simple isolated singularities. We show that the Hilbert scheme compactification of the total space of Starr's fibration on the space of twisted cubics on a cubic fourfold with simple isolated singularities and not containing a plane admits a contraction to a singular projective symplectic variety of dimension eight. The latter admits a crepant resolution which is a deformation of the symplectic eightfold constructed from the space of twisted cubics on a smooth cubic fourfold. Thereby we give another proof of the fact that the latter is …
We show the existence of rank 6 Ulrich bundles on a smooth cubic fourfold. First, we construct a simple sheaf E of rank 6 as an elementary modification of an ACM bundle of rank 6 on a smooth cubic fourfold. Such an E appears as an extension of two Lehn-Lehn-Sorger-van Straten sheaves. Then we prove that a general deformation of E(1) becomes Ulrich. In particular, this says that general cubic fourfolds have Ulrich complexity 6.
A well known conjecture asserts that a cubic fourfold $X$ whose transcendental cohomology $T_X$ can not be realized as the transcendental cohomology of a $K3$ surface is irrational. Since the geometry of cubic fourfolds is intricately related to the existence of algebraic $2$-cycles on them, it is natural to ask for the most algebraic cubic fourfolds $X$ to which this conjecture is still applicable. In this paper, we show that for an appropriate `algebraicity index' $κ_X$, there exists a unique class of cubics maximizing $κ_X$, not having an associated $K3$ surface; namely, the cubic fourfolds…
There are three types of involutions on a cubic fourfold; two of anti-symplectic type, and one symplectic. Here we show that cubics with involutions exhibit the full range of behaviour in relation to rationality conjectures. Namely, we show a general cubic fourfold with symplectic involution has no associated K3 surface and is conjecturely irrational. In contrast, we show a cubic fourfold with a particular anti-symplectic involution has an associated K3, and is in fact rational. We show such a cubic is contained in the intersection of all non-empty Hassett divisors; we call such a cubic Hasset…
In this short note, we show that there exist one dimensional families of cubic fourfolds with Chow motive of abelian type and finite dimensional inside every Hassett divisor of special cubic fourfolds. This also implies abelianity and finite dimensionality of the motive of related Hyperkähler varieties, such as the Fano variety of lines and the LLSvS 8fold.
This is a survey of the geometry of complex cubic fourfolds with a view toward rationality questions. Topics include classical constructions of rational examples, Hodge structures and special cubic fourfolds, associated K3 surfaces and their geometric interpretations, and connections with rationality and unirationality constructions.
We study the birational geometry of irreducible holomorphic symplectic varieties arising as varieties of lines of general cubic fourfolds containing a cubic scroll. We compute the ample and moving cones, and exhibit a birational automorphism of infinite order explaining the chamber decomposition of the moving cone.
We characterize the image of the period map for cubic fourfolds with at worst simple singularities as the complement of an arrangement of hyperplanes in the period space. It follows then that the GIT compactification of the moduli space of cubic fourfolds is isomorphic to the Looijenga's compactification associated to this arrangement. This work builds on and is a natural continuation of our previous paper on the GIT compactification of the moduli space of cubic fourfolds.
Informed by the Bloch-Beilinson conjectures, Voisin has made a conjecture about $0$-cycles on self-products of Calabi-Yau varieties. In this note, we consider variant versions of Voisin's conjecture for cubic fourfolds, and for hyperkähler varieties. We present examples for which these conjectures are verified, by considering certain very special cubic fourfolds and their Fano varieties of lines.
We prove the universal triviality of the third unramified cohomology group of a very general complex cubic fourfold containing a plane. The proof uses results on the unramified cohomology of quadrics due to Kahn, Rost, and Sujatha.
It is proved that the non-rationality of a generic cubic fourfold follows from a conjecture on the non-decomposability in the direct sum of non-trivial polarized Hodge structures of the polarized Hodge structure on transcendental cycles on a projective surface.
We describe an Azumaya algebra on the resolution of singularities of the double cover of a plane ramified along a nodal sextic associated to a non generic cubic fourfold containing a plane. We show that the derived category of such a resolution, twisted by the Azumaya algebra, is equivalent to the Kuznetsov component in the semiorthogonal decomposition of the derived category of the cubic fourfold.
In this paper, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Ulrich bundles on cubic fourfold $X$ of given rank $r$. As consequences, we show that for every integer $r\ge 2$ there exists a family of indecomposable rank $r$ Ulrich bundles on the certain cubic fourfolds, depending roughly on $r$ parameters, and in particular they are of wild representation type; special surfaces on the cubic fourfolds are explicitly constructed by Macaulay2; a new $19$-dimensional family of projective ten-dimensional irreducible holomorphic symplectic manifolds associated to a certain cubic fo…
In this paper, we develop a new method to classify abelian automorphism groups of hypersurfaces. We use this method to classify (Theorem 4.2) abelian groups that admit a liftable action on a smooth cubic fourfold. A parallel result (Theorem 5.1) is obtained for quartic surfaces.
Motivated by the relation between (twisted) K3 surfaces and special cubic fourfolds, we construct moduli spaces of polarized twisted K3 surfaces of any fixed degree and order. We do this by mimicking the construction of the moduli space of untwisted polarized K3 surfaces as a quotient of a bounded symmetric domain.
We present some families of cubic hypersurfaces in $\mathbb P^5 (\mathbb C)$ containing a plane whose associated quadric bundle does not have a rational section.
We show that a cubic fourfold F that is apolar to a Veronese surface has the property that its variety of power sums VSP(F,10) is singular along a K3 surface of genus 20. We prove that these cubics form a divisor in the moduli space of cubic fourfolds and that this divisor is not a Noether-Lefschetz divisor. We use this result to prove that there is no nontrivial Hodge correspondence between a very general cubic and its VSP.
We exhibit explicit examples of very general special cubic fourfolds with discriminant $d$ admitting an associated (twisted) K3 surface, which have non-isomorphic Fourier-Mukai partners. In particular, in the untwisted setting, we show that the number of Fourier-Mukai partners for a very general special cubic fourfold with discriminant $d$ and having an associated K3 surface, is equal to the number $m$ of Fourier-Mukai partners of its associated K3 surface, if $d \equiv 2 (\text{mod}\,6)$; else, if $d \equiv 0 (\text{mod}\,6)$, the cubic fourfold has $\lceil m/2 \rceil$ Fourier-Mukai partners.
We study the Brill-Noether theory of curves on K3 surfaces that are Hodge theoretically associated to cubic fourfolds of discriminant 14. We prove that any smooth curve in the polarization class has maximal Clifford index and deduce that a cubic fourfold contains disjoint planes if and only if it admits a Brill-Noether special associated K3 surface of degree 14. As an application, the complement of the pfaffian locus, inside the Noether-Lefschetz divisor of discriminant 14 in the moduli space of cubic fourfolds, is contained in the irreducible locus of cubic fourfolds containing two disjoint p…
We construct a new twenty-dimensional family of projective eight-dimensional irreducible holomorphic symplectic manifolds: the compactified moduli space M_3(Y) of twisted cubics on a smooth cubic fourfold Y that does not contain a plane is shown to be smooth and to admit a contraction M_3(Y) -> Z(Y) to a projective eight-dimensional symplectic manifold Z(Y). The construction is based on results on linear determinantal representations of singular cubic surfaces.
We prove the potential density of rational points on the variety of lines of a sufficiently general cubic fourfold defined over a number field, where ``sufficiently general'' means that a condition of Terasoma type is satisfied. These varieties have trivial canonical bundle and have geometric Picard group equal to $\mathbb{Z}$.
