This is the unabridged web version of the paper that will be published on the American Journal of Mathematics.
In this paper, we study the birational geometry of certain examples of mildly singular quartic 3-folds. A quartic 3-fold is an example of a Fano variety, that is, a variety $X$ with ample anticanonical sheaf $Ø_X(-K_X)$. From the point of view of birational geometry they basically fall within two classes: either $X$ is ``close to being rational'', and then it has very many biregularly distinct birational models as a Fano 3-fold, or, at the other extreme, $X$ has a unique model and it is often even true that every birational selfmap of $X$ is biregular. In this paper we construct examples of singular quartic 3-folds with exactly two birational models as Fano 3-folds.
In this article, we study birational transformations belonging to Galois points for certain plane quartic curve. In fact, we see that they can be extended to Cremona transformations. In particular, we determine the conjugacy class of them. We have that they are all conjugate to linear transformations.
The paper explores the birational geometry of terminal quartic 3-folds. In doing this I develop a new approach to study maximal singularities with positive dimensional centers. This allows to determine the pliability of a Q-factorial quartic with ordinary double points, and it shows the importance of Q-factoriality in the context of birational geometry of uniruled 3-folds
It is well-known that a nonsingular minimal cubic surface is birationally rigid; the group of its birational selfmaps is generated by biregular selfmaps and birational involutions such that all relations between the latter are implied by standard relations between reflections on an elliptic curve. It is also known that a factorial nodal quartic threefold is birationally rigid and its group of birational selfmaps is generated by biregular ones and certain birational involutions. We prove that all relations between these involutions are implied by standard relations on elliptic curves, complete …
We construct a determinantal family of quarto-quartic transformations of a complex projective space of dimension $3$ from trigonal curves of degree $8$ and genus $5$. Moreover we show that the variety of $(4,4)$-birational maps of $\mathbb{P}_3(\mathbb{C})$ has at least four irreducible components and describe three of them.
We find generators of the group of birational automorphisms of the Hessian surface of a general cubic surface. Its nonsingular minimal model is a K3 surface with the Picard lattice of rank 16. The latter embeds naturally in the even unimodular lattice $II^{1,25}$ of rank 26 and signature $(1,25)$ as the orthogonal complement of a root sublattice of rank 10. Our generators are related to reflections with respect to some Leech roots. A similar observation was made first in the case of quartic Kummer surfaces in the work of S. Kond$\bar {\roman o}$. We shall explain how our generators are related…
Two birational subvarieties of P^n are called Cremona equivalent if there is a Cremona modification of P^n mapping one to the other. If the codimension of the varieties is at least 2 then they are always Cremona Equivalent. For divisors the question is much more subtle and a general answer is unknown. In this paper I study the case of rational quartic surfaces and prove that they are all Cremona equivalent to a plane.
Three-dimensional del Pezzo varieties of degree 2 are double covers of projective space $\mathbb{P}^{3}$ branced in a quadric. In this paper we prove that if a del Pezzo variety of degree 2 has exactly 15 nodes then the corresponding quadric is a hyperplane section of the Igusa quartic or, equivalently, all such del Pezzo varieties are members of one particular linear system on the Coble fourfold. Their automorphism groups are induced from the automorphism group of Coble fourfold. Also we classify all $G$-birationally rigid varieties of such type.
We prove that every log crepant birational morphism between log terminal surfaces is decomposed into log-flopping type divisorial contraction morphisms and log blow-downs. Repeating these two kinds of contractions we reach a minimal log minimal surface from any log minimal surface.
Del Pezzo fibrations appear as minimal models of rationally connected varieties. The rationality of smooth del Pezzo fibrations is a well studied question but smooth fibrations are not dense in moduli. Little is known about the rationality of the singular models. We prove birational rigidity, hence non-rationality, of del Pezzo fibrations with simple non-Gorenstein singularities satisfying the famous $K^2$-condition. We then apply this result to study embeddings of $\operatorname{PSL}_2(7)$ into the Cremona group.
We explain a classical construction of a del Pezzo surface of degree d = 4 or 5 as a smooth order two congruence of lines in 3-space whose focal surface is a quartic surface $X_{20-d}$ with 20-d ordinary double points. We also show that $X_{15}$ can be realized as a hyperplane section of the Castelnuovo-Richmond-Igusa quartic hypersurface. This leads to the proof of rationality of the moduli space of 15-nodal quartic surfaces. We discuss some other birational models of $X_{15}$: quartic symmetroids, 5-nodal quartic surfaces, 10-nodal sextic surfaces in $P^4$ and nonsingular surfaces of degree …
It is known that the moduli space of plane quartic curves is birational to an arithmetic quotient of a 6-dimensional complex ball. In this paper, we shall show that there exists a 15-dimensional space of meromorphic automorphic forms on the complex ball which gives a birational embedding of the moduli space of plane quartics with level 2 structure into 14-dimensional projective space. This map coincides with the one given by Coble by using Gopel invariants.
In this thesis, I determine a bound on the defect of terminal Gorenstein quartic 3-folds. More generally, I study the defect of terminal Gorenstein Fano 3-folds of Picard rank 1 and genus at least 3. I state a geometric "motivation" of non Q-factoriality in the case of quartics.
This is a continuation of [Og12], concerning automorphisms of smooth quartic K3 surfaces and birational automorphisms of ambient projective three spaces.
We show that the K-moduli spaces of log Fano pairs $(\mathbb{P}^3, cS)$ where $S$ is a quartic surface interpolate between the GIT moduli space of quartic surfaces and the Baily-Borel compactification of moduli of quartic K3 surfaces as $c$ varies in the interval $(0,1)$. We completely describe the wall crossings of these K-moduli spaces. As the main application, we verify Laza-O'Grady's prediction on the Hassett-Keel-Looijenga program for quartic K3 surfaces. We also obtain the K-moduli compactification of quartic double solids, and classify all Gorenstein canonical Fano degenerations of $\ma…
Motivated by a kind of Penrose correspondence, we investigate the space of hyperplane sections of Segre quartic surfaces which have an ordinary cusp. We show that the space of such hyperplane sections is empty for two kinds of Segre surfaces, and it is a connected surface for all other kinds of Segre surfaces. We also show that when it is non-empty, the closure of the space is either birational to the surface itself or birational to a double covering of the surface, whose branch divisor consists of some specific lines on the surface.
By work of Looijenga and others, one has a good understanding of the relationship between GIT and Baily-Borel compactifications for the moduli spaces of degree 2 K3 surfaces, cubic fourfolds, and a few other related examples. The similar-looking cases of degree 4 K3 surfaces and double EPW sextics turn out to be much more complicated for arithmetic reasons. In this paper, we refine work of Looijenga to allow us to handle these cases. Specifically, in analogy with the so-called Hassett-Keel program for the moduli space of curves, we study the variation of log canonical models for locally symmet…
Two birational projective varieties in $P^n$ are Cremona Equivalent if there is a birational modification of $P^n$ mapping one onto the other. The minimal Cremona degree of $X\subset P^n$ is the minimal integer among all degrees of varieties that are Cremona Equivalent to $X$. The Cremona Equivalence and the minimal Cremona degree is well understood for subvarieties of codimension at least $2$ while both are in general very subtle questions for divisors. In this note I compute the minimal Cremona degree of quartic surfaces in $P^3$. This allows me to show that any quartic surface of elliptic r…
This paper studies the birational geometry of terminal Gorenstein Fano 3-folds. If Y is not Q-factorial, in most cases, it is possible to describe explicitly the divisor class group Cl Y by running a Minimal Model Program (MMP) on X, a small Q-factorialisation of Y. In this case, Weil non-Cartier divisors are generated by "topological traces " of K-negative extremal contractions on X. One can show, as an application of these methods, that a number of families of non-factorial terminal Gorenstein Fano 3-folds are rational. In particular, I give some examples of rational quartic hypersurfaces wi…
We prove birational rigidity and calculate the group of birational automorphisms of a nodal Q-factorial double cover $X$ of a smooth three-dimensional quadric branched over a quartic section. We also prove that $X$ is Q-factorial provided that it has at most 11 singularities; moreover, we give an example of a non-Q-factorial variety of this type with 12 simple double singularities.
We show that 3-fold terminal flips and divisorial contractions may be factored into a sequence of flops, blow-downs to a smooth curve in a smooth 3-fold or divisorial contractions to points with minimal discrepancies.
Let Y be a complex Enriques surface whose universal cover X is birational to a general quartic Hessian surface. Using the result on the automorphism group of X due to Dolgachev and Keum, we obtain a finite presentation of the automorphism group of Y. A fundamental domain of the action of the automorphism group on the nef cone of Y is described explicitly. The list of elliptic fibrations on Y and the list of combinations of rational double points that can appear on a surface birational to Y are presented. As an application, a set of generators of the automorphism group of the generic Enriques s…
We show that the existence of a birational weak Zariski decomposition for a pseudo-effective generalized polarized lc pair is equivalent to the existence of a generalized polarized log terminal model.
We classify birationally rigid orbifold Fano 3-folds of index one defined by $5 \times 5$ Pfaffians. We give a sharp criterion for birational rigidity of these families based on the type of singularities that the varieties admit. Various conjectures are born out of our study, highlighting a possible approach to the classification of terminal Fano 3-folds. The birationally rigid cases are the first known rigid examples of Fanos that are not (weighted) complete intersection.
We classify quartic del Pezzo surface fibrations over the projective line via numerical invariants, giving explicit examples for small values of the invariants. For generic such fibrations, we describe explicitly the geometry of spaces of sections to the fibration, and mappings to the intermediate Jacobian of the total space. We exhibit examples where these are birational, which has applications to arithmetic questions, especially over finite fields.
Mutations of the cluster variables generating the cluster algebra of type $A^{(2)}_2$ reduce to a two-dimensional discrete integrable system given by a quartic birational map. The invariant curve of the map is a singular quartic curve, and its resolution of the singularity induces a discrete integrable system on a conic governed by a cubic birational map conjugate to the cluster mutations of type $A^{(2)}_2$. Moreover, it is shown that the conic is also the invariant curve of the quadratic birational map arising from the cluster mutations of type $A^{(1)}_1$ and the two birational maps on the …
We describe a set of generators and defining relations for the group of birational automorphisms of a general 15-nodal quartic surface in the complex projective 3-dimensional space.
Let $X\subset \mathbb{P}^4$ be a terminal factorial quartic $3$-fold. If $X$ is non-singular, $X$ is \emph{birationally rigid}, i.e. the classical MMP on any terminal $\mathbb{Q}$-factorial projective variety $Z$ birational to $X$ always terminates with $X$. This no longer holds when $X$ is singular, but very few examples of non-rigid factorial quartics are known. In this article, we first bound the local analytic type of singularities that may occur on a terminal factorial quartic hypersurface $X\subset \mathbb{P}^4$. A singular point on such a hypersurface is either of type $cA_n$ ($n\geq 1$…
In a recent preprint, Y. Namikawa proposed a conjecture on Q-factorial terminalizations and their birational geometry of nilpotent orbits. He proved his conjecture for classical simple Lie algebras. In this note, we prove his conjecture for exceptional simple Lie algebras. For the birational geometry, contrary to the classical case, two new types of Mukai flops appear.
It is pretty well-known that toric Fano varieties of dimension k with terminal singularities correspond to convex lattice polytopes P in R^k of positive finite volume, such that intersection of P and Z^k consists of the point 0 and vertices of P. Likewise, Q-factorial terminal toric singularities essentially correspond to lattice simplexes with no lattice points inside or on the boundary (except the vertices). There have been a lot work, especially in the last 20 years or so on classification of these objects. The main goal of this paper is to bring together these and related results, that are…
By a canonical (resp. terminal) weak $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano $3$-fold we mean a normal projective one with at worst canonical (resp. terminal) singularities on which the anti-canonical divisor is $\mathbb{Q}$-Cartier, nef and big. For a canonical weak $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano $3$-fold $V$, we show that there exists a terminal weak $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano $3$-fold $X$, being birational to $V$, such that the $m$-th anti-canonical map defined by $|-mK_{X}|$ is birational for all $m\geq 52$. As an intermediate result, we show that for any $K$-Mori fiber space $Y$ of a canonical weak $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano $3$-fold, the $…
We study two rational Fano threefolds with an action of the icosahedral group $\mathfrak{A}_5$. The first one is the famous Burkhardt quartic threefold, and the second one is the double cover of the projective space branched in the Barth sextic surface. We prove that both of them are $\mathfrak{A}_5$-Fano varieties that are $\mathfrak{A}_5$-birationally superrigid. This gives two new embeddings of the group $\mathfrak{A}_5$ into the space Cremona group.
We prove that rationally connected Calabi--Yau 3-folds with kawamata log terminal (klt) singularities form a birationally bounded family, or more generally, rationally connected $3$-folds of $ε$-CY type form a birationally bounded family for $ε>0$. Moreover, we show that the set of $ε$-lc log Calabi--Yau pairs $(X, B)$ with coefficients of $B$ bounded away from zero is log bounded modulo flops. As a consequence, we deduce that rationally connected klt Calabi--Yau $3$-folds with mld bounded away from $1$ are bounded modulo flops.
A Brauer pair is a pair (X, α) where X is a quasi-projective variety over an algebraically closed field and α is an element in the 2-torsion part of the Brauer group of the function field of X. A Brauer pair (Y, α) is a terminal pair if the Brauer discrepancy of (Y, α) is positive. We show that given a Brauer pair (X, α), there is a terminal pair (Y, α) with a birational morphism Y -> X. In short, any Brauer pair admits a terminal resolution.
The Abel-Jacobi maps of the families of elliptic quintics and rational quartics lying on a smooth cubic threefold are studied. It is proved that their generic fiber is the 5-dimensional projective space for quintics, and a smooth 3-dimensional variety birational to the cubic itself for quartics. The paper is a continuation of the recent work of Markushevich-Tikhomirov, who showed that the first Abel-Jacobi map factors through the moduli component of stable rank 2 vector bundles on the cubic threefold with Chern numbers $c_1=0, c_2=2$ obtained by Serre's construction from elliptic quintics, and…
This is a survey article prepared for the submission to "Handbook of moduli". The following topics are discussed: (i) Basic facts and examples of resolutions for nilpotent orbit (ii) Q-factorial terminalizations of nilpotent orbit closures and related birational geometry (iii) Poisson deformations of nilpotent orbit closures.
Let $O$ be a nilpotent orbit of a complex semisimple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ and let $π: X \to \bar{O}$ be the finite covering associated with the universal covering of $O$. In the previous article we have explicitly constructed a $\mathbf{Q}$-factorial terminalization $\tilde{X}$ of $X$ when $\mathfrak{g}$ is classical. In the present article, we count how many different $\mathbf{Q}$-factorial terminalizations $X$ has. We construct the universal Poisson deformation of $\tilde{X}$ over $H^2(\tilde{X}, \mathbf{C})$ and look at the action of the Weyl group $W(X)$ on $H^2(\tilde{X}, \mathbf{C}…
Let $V$ be a complex nonsingular projective 3-fold of general type. We prove $P_{12}(V)>0$ and $P_{24}(V)>1$ (which answers an open problem of J. Kollar and S. Mori). We also prove that the canonical volume has an universal lower bound $\text{Vol}(V) \geq 1/2660$ and that the pluri-canonical map $Φ_m$ is birational onto its image for all $m\geq 77$. As an application of our method, we prove Fletcher's conjecture on weighted hyper-surface 3-folds with terminal quotient singularities. Another featured result is the optimal lower bound $\text{Vol}(V)\geq {1/420}$ among all those 3-folds $V$ with …
Let X be a projective variety with terminal singularities and let L be an ample Cartier divisor on X. We prove that if f is a birational contraction associated to an extremal ray $ R \subset \bar {NE(X)}$ such that R.(K_X+(n-2)L)<0, then f is a weighted blow-up of a smooth point. We then classify divisorial contractions associated to extremal rays R such that R.(K_X+rL)<0, where r is a non-negative rational number, and the fibres of f have dimension less or equal to r+1.
In this paper we describe the birational geometry of Fano double spaces $V\stackrelσ{\to}{\mathbb P}^{M+1}$ of index 2 and dimension $\geqslant 8$ with at mostquadratic singularities of rank $\geqslant 8$, satisfying certain additional conditions of general position: we prove that these varieties have no structures of a rationally connected fibre space over a base of dimension $\geqslant 2$, that every birational map $χ\colon V\dashrightarrow V'$ onto the total space of a Mori fibre space $V'/{\mathbb P}^1$ induces an isomorphism $V^+\cong V'$ of the blow up $V^+$ of the variety $V$ along $σ^{…
In general, a nilpotent orbit closure in a complex simple Lie algebra \g, does not have a crepant resolution. But, it always has a Q-factorial terminalization by the minimal model program. According to B. Fu, a nilpotent orbit closure has a crepant resolution only when it is a Richardson orbit, and the resolution is obtained as a Springer map for it. In this paper, we shall generalize this result to Q-factorial terminalizations when \g$ is classical. Here, the induced orbits play an important role instead of Richardson orbits.
We classify birational maps into elliptic fibrations of a general quasismooth hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}(1,a_{1},a_{2},a_{3},a_{4})$ of degree $\sum_{i=1}^{4}a_{i}$ that has terminal singularities.
A nilpotent orbit $O$ of a complex semisimple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ has finite fundamental group. Associated with an etale cover of $O$, we have a finite cover of the closure $\bar{O}$ of $O$. In this article we consider the finite cover X associated with the universal cover of a nilpotent orbit $O$ of a classical simple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$. We construct explicitly a Q-factorial terminalization of X in a group theoretic way.
This paper studies the defect of terminal Gorenstein Fano 3 folds. I determine a bound on the defect of terminal Gorenstein Fano 3-folds of Picard rank 1 that do not contain a plane. I give a general bound for quartic 3-folds and indicate how to study the defect of terminal Gorenstein Fano 3-folds with Picard rank 1 that contain a plane.
We study birational transformations into elliptic fibrations and birational automorphisms of quasismooth anticanonically embedded weighted Fano 3-fold hypersurfaces having terminal singularities classified by A.R. Iano-Fletcher, J. Johnson, J. Kollar, and M. Reid.
For a $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano 3-fold $X$ on which $K_X$ is a canonical divisor, we investigate the geometry induced from the linear system $|-mK_X|$ in this paper and prove that the anti-$m$-canonical map $φ_{-m}$ is birational onto its image for all $m\geq 39$. By a weak $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano 3-fold $X$ we mean a projective one with at worst terminal singularities on which $-K_X$ is $\mathbb{Q}$-Cartier, nef and big. For weak $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano 3-folds, we prove that $φ_{-m}$ is birational onto its image for all $m\geq 97$.
