We show that if a family of complex varieties over a base B admits a section when restricted to a very general curve in B, then the family must contain a subfamily of rationally connected varieties dominating B. As an application, we deduce the existence of one parameter families of Enriques surfaces with no section.
We study extremality properties of covering families of rational curves on projective varieties. Among others, we show that on a normal and Q-factorial projective variety of dimension at most 4, every covering and quasi-unsplit family of rational curves generates a geometric extremal ray of the Mori cone.
In this paper, we investigate higher order minimal families $H_i$ of rational curves associated to Fano manifolds $X$. We prove that $H_i$ is also a Fano manifold if the Chern characters of $X$ satisfy some positivity conditions. We also provide a sufficient condition for Fano manifolds to be covered by higher rational manifolds.
This is a continuation of "Rational families of vector bundles on curves, I". Let C be a smooth projective curve of genus at least 2 and let M be the moduli space of rank 2, stable vector bundles on C, with fixed determinant of degree 1. For any k>0, we find all the irreducible components of the space of rational curves of degree k on M and their maximal rationally connected quotients.
This revision contains some additional corrections and references, including a reference to Zeuthen suggested by Kleiman. For possible subsequent revisions, check http://math.ucr.edu/~ziv/papers/1nodal.pdf
We introduce the notion of families of n-marked smooth rational tropical curves over smooth tropical varieties and establish a one-to-one correspondence between (equivalence classes of) these families and morphisms from smooth tropical varieties into the moduli space of n-marked abstract rational tropical curves.
It is a well-known fact that families of minimal rational curves on rational homogeneous manifolds of Picard number one are uniform, in the sense that the tangent bundle to the manifold has the same splitting type on each curve of the family. In this note we prove that certain --stronger-- uniformity conditions on a family of minimal rational curves on a Fano manifold of Picard number one allow to prove that the manifold is homogeneous.
In this paper we address Fano manifolds X with a locally unsplit dominating family of rational curves of anticanonical degree equal to the dimension of X. We first observe that their Picard number is at most 3, and then we provide a classification of all cases with maximal Picard number. We also give examples of locally unsplit dominating families of rational curves whose varieties of minimal tangents at a general point is singular.
We prove that in a family of projective threefolds defined over an algebraically closed field, the locus of rational fibers is a countable union of closed subsets of the locus of separably rationally connected fibers. When the ground field has characteristic zero, this implies that the locus of rational fibers in a smooth family of projective threefolds is the union of at most countably many closed subfamilies.
We study families of rational curves on certain irreducible holomorphic symplectic varieties. In particular, we prove that any ample linear system on a projective holomorphic symplectic variety of K3[n]-type contains a uniruled divisor. As an application we provide a generalization of the Beauville-Voisin result on the Chow group of 0-cycles on such varieties.
We prove the analogue of Viehweg's hyperbolicity conjecture for Whitney equisingular families of projective varieties with Gorenstein rational singularities whose geometric generic fiber has a good minimal model. Namely, for such families with maximal variation, the base spaces are of log general type. The main new ingredient is the use of intersection complexes as Hodge modules in the construction of logarithmic Higgs sheaves by Viehweg-Zuo and Popa-Schnell. This construction suggests an equisingular stratification of the moduli space of varieties of general type, with each stratum being hype…
We give an upper bound for the degree of rational curves in a family that covers a given birational ruled surface in projective space. The upper bound is stated in terms of the degree, sectional genus and arithmetic genus of the surface. We introduce an algorithm for constructing examples where the upper bound is tight. As an application of our methods we improve an inequality on lattice polygons.
In this paper we investigate Fano manifolds $X$ whose Chern characters $ch_k(X)$ satisfy some positivity conditions. Our approach is via the study of polarized minimal families of rational curves $(H_x,L_x)$ through a general point $x\in X$. First we translate positivity properties of the Chern characters of $X$ into properties of the pair $(H_x,L_x)$. This allows us to classify polarized minimal families of rational curves associated to Fano manifolds $X$ satisfying $ch_2(X)\geq0$ and $ch_3(X)\geq0$. As a first application, we provide sufficient conditions for these manifolds to be covered by…
We study invariant divisors on the total spaces of the homogeneous deformations of rational complexity-one T-varieties constructed by Ilten and Vollmert. In particular, we identify a natural subgroup of the Picard group for any general fiber of such a deformation, which is canonically isomorphic to the Picard group of the special fiber. This isomorphism preserves Euler characteristic, intersection numbers, and the canonical class.
Under suitable hypotheses, we prove that a form of a projective homogeneous variety $G/P$ defined over the function field of a surface over an algebraically closed field has a rational point. The method uses an algebro-geometric analogue of simple connectedness replacing the unit interval by the projective line. As a consequence, we complete the proof of Serre's Conjecture II in Galois cohomology for function fields over an algebraically closed field.
We determine the rationality of very general quasismooth Fano 3-fold weighted hypersurfaces completely and determine the stable rationality of them except for cubic 3-folds. More precisely we prove that (i) very general Fano 3-fold weighted hypersurfaces of index 1 or 2 are not stably rational except possibly for the cubic threefolds, (ii) among the 27 families of Fano 3-fold weighted hypersurfaces of index greater than 2, very general members of specific 7 families are not stably rational and the remaining 20 families consists of rational varieties.
We prove that a complete family of linearly non-degenerate rational curves of degree $e > 2$ in $\mathbb{P}^n$ has at most $n-1$ moduli. For $e = 2$ we prove that such a family has at most $n$ moduli. It is unknown whether or not this is the best possible result. The general method involves exhibiting a map from the base of a family $X$ to the Grassmaninian of $e$-planes in $\mathbb{P}^n$ and analyzing the resulting map on cohomology.
Let C be a smooth complex projective curve of genus at least 2 and let M be the moduli space of rank 2, stable vector bundles on C, with fixed determinant of degree 1. For any k>1, we find two irreducible components of the space of rational curves of degree k on M. One component, which we call the nice component has the property that the general element is a very free curve if k is sufficiently large. The other component has the general element a free curve. Both components have the expected dimension and their maximal rationally connected fibration is the Jacobian of the curve C.
Let k be an algebraically closed field of characteristic 0, and let f be a morphism of smooth projective varieties from X to Y over the ring k((t)) of formal Laurent series. We prove that if a general geometric fiber of f is rationally connected, then the Berkovich analytifications of X and Y are homotopy equivalent. Two important consequences of this result are that the homotopy type of the Berkovich analytification of any smooth projective variety X over k((t)) is a birational invariant of X, and that the Berkovich analytification of a rationally connected smooth projective variety over k((t…
Iterated Grassmannian bundles over moduli stacks of vector bundles on a curve are shown to be birational to an affine space times a moduli stack of degree 0 vector bundles, following the method of King and Schofield. Applications include the birational type of some Brill-Noether loci, of moduli schemes for vector bundles with parabolic structure or with level structure and for A. Schmitt's decorated vector bundles. A further consequence concerns the existence of Poincare families on finite coverings of the moduli schemes.
Let X be a projective variety which is covered by a family of rational curves of minimal degree. The classic bend-and-break argument of Mori asserts that if x and y are two general points, then there are at most finitely many curves in that family which contain both x and y. In this work we shed some light on the question as to whether two sufficiently general points actually define a unique curve. As an immediate corollary to the results of this paper, we give a characterization of projective spaces which improves on the known generalizations of Kobayashi-Ochiai's theorem.
We study the set of rational curves of a certain topological type in general members of certain families of Calabi-Yau threefolds. For some families we investigate to what extent it is possible to conclude that this set is finite. For other families we investigate whether this set contains at least one point representing an isolated rational curve.
First we solve the problem of finding minimal degree families on toric surfaces by reducing it to lattice geometry. Then we describe how to find minimal degree families on, more generally, rational complex projective surfaces.
Under natural hypotheses we give an upper bound on the dimension of families of singular curves with hyperelliptic normalizations on a surface S with p_g(S) >0 via the study of the associated families of rational curves in Hilb^2(S). We use this result to prove the existence of nodal curves of geometric genus 3 with hyperelliptic normalizations, on a general K3 surface, thus obtaining specific 2-dimensional families of rational curves in its Hilbert square. We describe two infinite series of examples of general, primitively polarized K3's such that their Hilbert squares contain a IP^2 or a thr…
This paper is a follow up of arXiv:1702.02255 [math.NT]. We construct explicitly versal families of elliptic curves with rational points of order 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 respectively.
We investigate families of minimal rational curves on Schubert varieties, their Bott-Samelson desingularizations, and their generalizations constructed by Nicolas Perrin in the minuscule case. In particular, we describe the minimal families on small resolutions of minuscule Schubert varieties.
This paper deals with a study of the rational elliptic surfaces whose $J$-invariant functions are of degree one. Almost all of these elliptic surfaces have four singular fibers, while the remaining surfaces have only three singular fibers. The moduli space of these elliptic surfaces is canonically isomorphic to the projective line by taking the $J$-values for a certain fixed type of singular fibers. Over the moduli space, we discuss our elliptic surfaces, and investigate how their sections are described by the parameter of the moduli space. By using a covering space of the moduli, we construct…
Let $k$ be a field of characteristic zero, and let $X$ be a projective variety embedded into a projective space over $k$. For two natural numbers $r$ and $d$ let $C_{r,d}(X)$ be the Chow scheme parametrizing effective cycles of dimension $r$ and degree $d$ on the variety $X$. An effective $r$-cycle of minimal degree on $X$ gives rise to a chain of embeddings of $C_{r,d}(X)$ into $C_{r,d+1}(X)$, whose colimit is the connective Chow monoid $C_r^{\infty }(X)$ of $r$-cycles on $X$. Let $BC_r^{\infty }(X)$ be the motivic classifying space of this monoid. In the paper we establish an isomorphism bet…
We construct k-parameter families of rational surface automorphisms for any k. These are automorphisms of surfaces X, which are constructed from iterated blowups over the projective plane. In certain cases: we are able to determine the exact automorphism group of X, as well as when two of the surfaces X are inequivalent.
Let $Y$ be a smooth complex projective variety. We study the cohomology of smooth families of hypersurfaces $X\to B$ for $B\subset{\bf P}H^0(Y,O(d))$ a codimension $c$ subvariety. We give an asymptotically optimal bound on $c$ and $k$ for $d\to\infty$ for the space $H^k(X,\C)$ not to be spanned by the image of $H^k(Y\times B,\C)$, thus extending the validity of Lefschetz Hyperplane section Theorem and Nori's Connectivity Theorem. Next, we construct in the limit case explicit families of higher Chow groups which span the non trivial cohomology classes in $X$. We give examples of indecomposable …
This paper is devoted to the theory of symplectic instanton bundles on an odd dimensional projective space ${\mathbb P}^{2n+1}$ with $n\ge 2$. We study the 't Hooft instanton bundles introduced by Ottaviani and a new family of instanton bundles which generalizes one introduced on ${\mathbb P}^3$ independently by Rao and Skiti. The main result is the determination of the birational types of the moduli spaces of 't Hooft and of Rao-Skiti instanton bundles, respectively. Assuming a conjecture of Ottaviani, we show that the moduli space of all symplectic instanton bundles on ${\mathbb P}^{2n+1}$ w…
We prove weak approximation for isotrivial families of rationally connected varieties defined over the function field of a smooth projective complex curve.
In this paper, we study the geometry of trisections on certain rational elliptic surfaces. We utilize Mumford representations of semi-reduced divisors in order to construct trisections and related plane curves with interesting properties explicitly. As a result we are able to construct new examples of Zariski pairs. Especially, we show the existence of a family of Zariski pairs that degenerate to the same conic-line arrangement.
We study families of scrolls containing a given rational curve and families of rational curves contained in a fixed scroll via a stratification in terms of the degree of the induced map onto P^1 and we prove that there is no rational normal scroll of minimal degree and of dimension <=n/2 containing a general binary curve inP^n.
In this note, we give an alternative proof of uniform boundedness of the number of integral points of smooth projective curves over a fixed number field with good reduction outside of a fixed set of primes. We use that due to Bertin-Romagny, the Kodaira-Parshin families constructed by Lawrence-Venkatesh can themselves be assembled into a family. We then repeat Lawrence-Venkatesh's study of the p-adic period map, together with the comparison of nearby fibres.
We study families of rational curves on irreducible holomorphic symplectic varieties. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a sufficiently ample linear system on a holomorphic symplectic variety of $K3^{[n]}$-type to contain a uniruled divisor covered by rational curves of primitive class. In particular, for any fixed $n$, we show that there are only finitely many polarization types of holomorphic symplectic variety of $K3^{[n]}$-type that do not contain such a uniruled divisor. As an application we provide a generalization of a result due to Beauville-Voisin on the Chow group of 0-…
We show that rationality does not specialize in flat projective families of complex fourfolds with terminal singularities. This answers a question of Totaro, who established the analogous result in all dimensions greater than 4.
We define a cone curve to be a reduced sextic space curve which lies on a quadric cone and does not go through the vertex. We classify families of bitangent planes of cone curves. The methods we apply can be used for any space curve with ADE singularities, though in this paper we concentrate on cone curves. An embedded complex projective surface which is adjoint to a degree one weak Del Pezzo surface contains families of minimal degree rational curves, which cannot be defined by the fibers of a map. Such families are called minimal non-fibration families. Families of bitangent planes of cone c…
In this article, we show that for any non-isotrivial family of abelian varieties over a rational base with big monodromy, those members that have adelic Galois representation with image as large as possible form a density-$1$ subset. Our results can be applied to a number of interesting families of abelian varieties, such as rational families dominating the moduli of Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves, trigonal curves, or plane curves. As a consequence, we prove that for any dimension $g \geq 3$, there are infinitely many abelian varieties over $\mathbb Q$ with adelic Galois representation havi…
We study families of rational curves on an algebraic variety satisfying incidence conditions. We prove an analogue of bend-and-break: that is, we show that under suitable conditions, such a family must contain reducibles. In the case of curves in $¶^n$ incident to certain complete intersections, we prove the family is irreducible.
Let P^2_r be the projective plane blown up at r generic points. Denote by E_0,E_1,...,E_r the strict transform of a generic straight line on P^2 and the exceptional divisors of the blown-up points on P^2_r respectively. We consider the variety V of all irreducible curves C in |dE_0-d_1E_1-...-d_rE_r| with k nodes as the only singularities and give asymptotically nearly optimal sufficient conditions for its smoothness, irreducibility and non-emptyness. Moreover, we extend our conditions for the smoothness and the irreducibility on families of reducible curves. For r<10 we give the complete answ…
We construct the first non-trivial examples of complete families of non-degenerate smooth space curves, and show that the base of such a family cannot be a rational curve. Both results rely on the study of the strong semistability of certain vector bundles.
By the Lefschetz hyperplane theorem, if X is a smooth quasi-projective variety and C a general curve section of X then the fundamental group of C surjects onto the fundamental group of X. Here we consider when this conclusion holds for a general member of an arbitrary family of curves that covers X. The most interesting case is families of rational curves.
The classical (m,k)-Landen transform F_{m,k} is a self-map of the field of rational functions C(z) obtained by forming a weighted average of a rational function over twists by m'th roots of unity. Identifying the set of rational maps of degree d with an affine open subset of P^{2d+1}, we prove that F_{m,0} induces a dominant rational self-map R_{d,m,0} of P^{2d+1} of algebraic degree m, and for 0 < k < m, the transform F_{m,k} induces a dominant rational self-map R_{d,m,k} of algebraic degree m of a certain hyperplane in P^{2d+1}. We show in all cases that R_{d,m,k} extends nicely to a map of …
A complex compact surface which carries an automorphism of positive topological entropy has been proved by Cantat to be either a torus, a K3 surface, an Enriques surface or a rational surface. Automorphisms of rational surfaces are quite mysterious and have been recently the object of intensive studies. In this paper, we construct several new examples of automorphisms of rational surfaces with positive topological entropy. We also explain how to define and to count parameters in families of birational maps of the complex projective plane and in families of rational surfaces.
We develop techniques for using compactifications of Hurwitz spaces to study families of rational maps $\mathbb{P}^1\to\mathbb{P}^1$ defined by critical orbit relations. We apply these techniques in two settings: We show that the parameter space $\mathrm{Per}_{d,n}$ of degree-$d$ bicritical maps with a marked 4-periodic critical point is a $d^2$-punctured Riemann surface of genus $\frac{(d-1)(d-2)}{2}$. We also show that the parameter space $\mathrm{Per}_{2,5}$ of degree-2 rational maps with a marked 5-periodic critical point is a 10-punctured elliptic curve, and we identify its isomorphism cl…