Let $\mathcal D_{d,k}$ denote the discriminant variety of degree $d$ polynomials in one variable with at least one of its roots being of multiplicity $\geq k$. We prove that the tangent cones to $\mathcal D_{d,k}$ span $\mathcal D_{d,k-1}$ thus, revealing an extreme ruled nature of these varieties. The combinatorics of the web of affine tangent spaces to $\mathcal D_{d,k}$ in $\mathcal D_{d,k-1}$ is directly linked to the root multiplicities of the relevant polynomials. In fact, solving a polynomial equation $P(z) = 0$ turns out to be equivalent to finding hyperplanes through a given point $P(z)\in \mathcal D_{d,1} \approx \A^d$ which are tangent to the discriminant hypersurface $\mathcal D_{d,2}$. We also connect the geometry of the Viète map $\mathcal V_d: \A^d_{root} \to \A^d_{coef}$, given by the elementary symmetric polynomials, with the tangents to the discriminant varieties $\{\mathcal D_{d,k}\}$.
Various $d$-partitions $\{μ\}$ provide a refinement $\{\mathcal D_μ^\circ\}$ of the stratification of $\A^d_{coef}$ by the $\mathcal D_{d,k}$'s. Our main result, Theorem 7.1, describes an intricate relation between the divisibility of polynomials in one variable and the families of spaces tangent to various strata $\{\mathcal D_μ^\circ\}$.
We give explicit formulas for the dimensions and the degrees of $A$-discriminant varieties introduced by Gelfand-Kapranov-Zelevinsky. Our formulas can be applied also to the case where the $A$-discriminant varieties are higher-codimensional and their degrees are described by the geometry of the configurations $A$. Moreover combinatorial formulas for the Euler obstructions of general (not necessarily normal) toric varieties will be also given.
We study the subvariety of singular sections, the discriminant, of a base point free linear system $|L|$ on a smooth toric variety $X$. On one hand we describe pairs $(X,L)$ for which the discriminant is of low dimension. Precisely, we collect some bounds on this dimension and classify those pairs whose dimension differs the bound less than or equal to two. On the other hand we study the degree of the discriminant for some relevant families on polarized toric varieties, describing their minimal values and the region of the ample cone where this minimal is attained.
We study the $A$-discriminant of toric varieties. We reduce its computation to the case of irreducible configurations and describe its behavior under specialization of some of the variables to zero. We prove a Gale dual characterization of dual defect toric varieties and deduce from it the classsification of such varieties in codimension less than or equal to four. This classification motivates a decomposition theorem which yields a sufficient condition for a toric variety to be dual defect. For codimension less than or equal to four, this condition is also necessary and we expect this to be t…
This text is a draft of the review paper on projectively dual varieties. Topics include dual varieties, Pyasetskii pairing, discriminant complexes, resultants and schemes of zeros, secant and tangential varieties, Ein theorems, applications of projective differential geometry and Mori theory to dual varieties, degree and multiplicities of discriminants, self-dual varieties, etc.
We give a simple combinatorial proof of the toric version of Mori's theorem that the only $n$-dimensional smooth projective varieties with ample tangent bundle are the projective spaces $\mathbb{P}^n$.
The derived categories of toric varieties admit semi-orthogonal decompositions coming from wall-crossing in GIT. We prove that these decompositions satisfy a Jordan-Holder property: the subcategories that appear, and their multiplicities, are independent of the choices made. For Calabi-Yau toric varieties wall-crossing instead gives derived equivalences and autoequivalences, and mirror symmetry relates these to monodromy around the GKZ discriminant locus. We formulate a conjecture equating intersection multiplicities in the discriminant with the multiplicities appearing in certain semi-orthogo…
In this paper, we establish the following version at infinity of Whitney's theorem [6, 7]: Geometric and algebraic tangent cones at infinity of complex algebraic varieties coincide. The proof of this fact is based on a geometric characterization of geometric tangent cones at infinity and using the global Łojasiewicz inequality with explicit exponents for complex algebraic varieties. We also show that tangent cones at infinity of complex algebraic varieties can be computed using Gröbner bases.
I prove a crystalline characterization of abelian varieties in characteristic $p>0$ amongst the class of varieties with trivial tangent bundle. I show using my characterization that a smooth, projective, ordinary variety with trivial tangent bundle is an abelian variety if and only if its second crystalline cohomology is torsion free. I also show that a conjecture of Ke-Zheng Li about characteristic $p>0$ varieties with trivial tangent bundles is true for surfaces. I give a new proof of a result of Li and prove a refinement of it. Based on my characterization of abelian varieties I propose mod…
This paper generalises Mori's famous theorem about "Projective manifolds with ample tangent bundles" to normal projective varieties in the following way: A normal projective variety over $\mathbb{C}$ with ample tangent sheaf is isomorphic to the complex projective space.
Recently, Kanemitsu has discovered a counterexample to the long-standing conjecture that the tangent bundle of a Fano manifold of Picard number one is (semi)stable. His counterexample is a smooth horospherical variety. There is a weaker conjecture that the tangent bundle of a Fano manifold of Picard number one is simple. We prove that this weaker conjecture is valid for smooth horospherical varieties of Picard number one. Our proof follows from the existence of an irreducible family of unbendable rational curves whose tangent vectors span the tangent spaces of the horospherical variety at gene…
We describe the stratification by tensor rank of the points belonging to the tangent developable of any Segre variety. We give algorithms to compute the rank and a decomposition of a tensor belonging to the secant variety of lines of any Segre variety. We prove Comon's conjecture on the rank of symmetric tensors for those tensors belonging to tangential varieties to Veronese varieties.
All components of complements of discriminant varieties of simple real function singularities are explicitly listed. New invariants of such components (for not necessarily simple singularities) are introduced. A combinatorial algorithm enumerating topological types of morsifications of real function singularities is promoted.
We determine the stability/instability of the tangent bundles of the Fano varieties in a certain class of two orbit varieties, which are classified by Pasquier in 2009. As a consequence, we show that some of these varieties admit unstable tangent bundles, which disproves a conjecture on stability of tangent bundles of Fano manifolds.
We study the positivity of exterior powers of the tangent sheaf on toric varieties in order to generalize results by Campana and Peternell about 3-folds with nef second exterior power of the tangent bundle. Using the theory of equivariant vector bundles and the toric MMP, we establish in the smooth case a criterion for the positivity of $Λ^m\mathcal T_X$ in terms of wall relations. As an application, we classify smooth toric varieties of arbitrary dimension $n\ge3$ with $Λ^2\mathcal T_X$ nef and those of dimension $n\ge 4$ with $Λ^3\mathcal T_X$ ample.
Following Contou-Carrere [CC], we consider the Bott-Samelson resolution of a Schubert variety as a variety of galleries in the Tits building associated to the situation. We prove that the rational smoothness of a Schubert variety can be expressed in terms of a subspace of the Zariski tangent space called, the combinatorial tangent space. For this, we use a characterization of rational smoothness of a Schubert variety introduced by Carrell and Peterson [CP].
We show that the Mordell Weil rank of an isotrivial abelian variety with a cyclic holonomy depends only on the fundamental group of the complement to the discriminant provided the discriminant has singularities in the introduced here CM class. This class of singularities includes all unibranched plane curves singularities. As a corollary we give a family of simple Jacobians over field of rational functions in two variable for which the Mordell Weil rank is arbitrary large.
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 forms a smooth variety for a general hypersurface.
We give a combinatorial criterion for the tangent bundle on a smooth toric variety to be stable with respect to a given polarisation in terms of the corresponding lattice polytope. Furthermore, we show that for a smooth toric surface and a smooth toric variety of Picard rank 2, there exists an ample line bundle with respect to which the tangent bundle is stable if and only if it is an iterated blow-up of projective space.
Let $X$ be a smooth projective variety defined over an algebraically closed field of positive characteristic $p$ whose tangent bundle is nef. We prove that $X$ admits a smooth morphism $X \to M$ such that the fibers are Fano varieties with nef tangent bundle and $T_M$ is numerically flat. We also prove that extremal contractions exist as smooth morphisms. As an application, we prove that, if the Frobenius morphism can be lifted modulo $p^2$, then $X$ admits, up to a finite étale Galois cover, a smooth morphism onto an ordinary abelian variety whose fibers are products of projective spaces.
Let $X$ be a nonsingular complex projective toric variety. We address the question of semi-stability as well as stability for the tangent bundle $T{X}$. In particular, a complete answer is given when $X$ is a Fano toric variety of dimension four with Picard number at most two, complementing earlier work of Nakagawa. We also give an infinite set of examples of Fano toric varieties for which $TX$ is unstable; the dimensions of this collection of varieties are unbounded. Our method is based on the equivariant approach initiated by Klyachko and developed further by Perling and Kool.
We propose a conjectural list of Fano manifolds of Picard number $1$ with pseudoeffective normalized tangent bundles, which we prove in various situations by relating it to the complete divisibility conjecture of Russo and Zak on varieties with small codegree. Furthermore, the pseudoeffective thresholds and hence the pseudoeffective cones of the projectivized tangent bundles of rational homogeneous spaces of Picard number $1$ are explicitly determined by studying the total dual VMRT and the geometry of stratified Mukai flops. As a by-product, we obtain sharp vanishing theorems on the global tw…
We give simple geometric proofs of Aprodu-Farkas-Papadima-Raicu-Weyman's theorem on syzygies of tangent developable surfaces of rational normal curves and Raicu-Sam's result on syzygies of K3 carpets. As a consequence, we obtain a quick proof of Green's conjecture for general curves of genus $g$ over an algebraically closed field $\mathbf{k}$ with $\operatorname{char}(\mathbf{k}) = 0$ or $\operatorname{char}(\mathbf{k}) \geq \lfloor (g-1)/2 \rfloor$. We also show the arithmetic normality of tangent developable surfaces of arbitrary smooth projective curves of large degree.
We study normal directions to facets of the Newton polytope of the discriminant of the Laurent polynomial system via the tropical approach. We use the combinatorial construction proposed by Dickenstein, Feichtner and Sturmfels for the tropicalization of algebraic varieties admitting a parametrization by a linear map followed by a monomial map.
We consider tangent cones to Schubert subvarieties of the flag variety $G/B$, where $B$ is a Borel subgroup of a reductive complex algebraic group $G$ of type $E_6$, $E_7$ or $E_8$. We prove that if $w_1$ and $w_2$ form a good pair of involutions in the Weyl group $W$ of $G$ then the tangent cones $C_{w_1}$ and $C_{w_2}$ to the corresponding Schubert subvarieties of $G/B$ do not coincide as subschemes of the tangent space to $G/B$ at the neutral point.
Going one step further in Zak's classification of Scorza varieties with secant defect equal to one, we characterize the Veronese embedding of $¶^n$ given by the complete linear system of quadrics and its smooth projections from a point as the only smooth irreducible complex and non-degenerate projective subvarieties of $¶^N$ that can be projected isomorphically into $¶^{2n}$ when $N\geq\binom{n+2}{2}-2$.
We show that algebraic varieties with maximum likelihood degree one are exactly the images of reduced A-discriminantal varieties under monomial maps with finite fibers. The maximum likelihood estimator corresponding to such a variety is Kapranov's Horn uniformization. This extends Kapranov's characterization of A-discriminantal hypersurfaces to varieties of arbitrary codimension.
Beauville asked if a compact Kähler manifold with split tangent bundle has a universal covering that is a product of manifolds. We use Mori theory and elementary results about holomorphic foliations to study this problem for projective uniruled varieties. In particular we obtain an affirmative answer for rationally connected varieties in any dimension and uniruled varieties in dimension 4.
We characterize Kaehler manifolds with trivial logarithmic tangent bundle (with respect to a divisor D) as a class of certain compatifications of complex semi-tori.
Let V be a finite dimensional complex vector space and V^* its dual and let X in P(V) be a smooth projective variety of dimension n and degree d at least two. For a generic n-tuple of hyperplanes H_1,...,H_n in P(V^*)^n, the intersection of X with H_1,...,H_n consists of d distinct points. We define the "discriminant of X", to be the the set D(X) of n-tuples for which the set-theoretic intersection is not equal to d points. Then D(X) is a hyper surface in P(V^*)^n and the set of defining polynomials, which is a one-dimensional vector space, is called the "discriminant line". We show that this …
Let $ϕ: X \to \mathbb P^n$ be a double cover branched along a smooth hypersurface of degree $2m, 2 \leq m \leq n-1$. We study the varieties of minimal rational tangents $\mathcal C_x \subset \mathbb P T_x(X)$ at a general point $x$ of $X$. We describe the homogeneous ideal of $\mathcal C_x$ and show that the projective isomorphism type of $\mathcal C_x$ varies in a maximal way as $x$ varies over general points of $X$. Our description of the ideal of $\mathbb C_x$ implies a certain rigidity property of the covering morphism $ϕ$. As an application of this rigidity, we show that any finite morphi…
The purpose of this paper is to translate positivity properties of the tangent bundle (and the anti-canonical bundle) of an algebraic manifold into existence and movability properties of rational curves and to investigate the impact on the global geometry of the manifold $X$. Among the results we prove are these: \quad If $X$ is a projective manifold, and ${\cal E} \subset T_X$ is an ample locally free sheaf with $n-2\ge rk {\cal E}\ge n$, then $X \simeq \EP_n$. \quad Let $X$ be a projective manifold. If $X$ is rationally connected, then there exists a free $T_X$-ample family of (rational) cur…
We consider the "limiting behavior" of *discriminants*, by which we mean informally the locus in some parameter space of some type of object where the objects have certain singularities. We focus on the space of partially labeled points on a variety X, and linear systems on X. These are connected --- we use the first to understand the second. We describe their classes in the Grothendieck ring of varieties, as the number of points gets large, or as the line bundle gets very positive. They stabilize in an appropriate sense, and their stabilization is given in terms of motivic zeta values. Motiva…
We give an introduction to the theory of varieties of minimal rational tangents, emphasizing its aspect as a fusion of algebraic geometry and differential geometry, more specifically, a fusion of Mori geometry of minimal rational curves and Cartan geometry of cone structures.
Let $G$ be a complex reductive group, $T$ be a maximal torus of $G$, $B$ be a Borel subgroup of $G$ containing $T$, $W$ be the Weyl group of $G$ with respect to $T$. To each element $w$ of $W$ one can associate the Schubert subvariety $X_w$ of the flag variety $G/B$, the tangent cone to $X_w$ at the identity point $p$ considered as a subcheme of the tangent space $T_p(G/B)$, and the reduced tangent cone to $X_w$ at $p$ considered as a subvariety of $T_p(G/B)$. Let $w_1$, $w_2$ be distinct involutions in $W$. We prove that if $G$ is of type $B_n$ or $C_n$, then the tangent cones corresponding t…
We consider systems of Laurent polynomials with support on a fixed point configuration. In the non-defective case, the closure of the locus of coefficients giving a non-degenerate multiple root of the system is defined by a polynomial called the mixed discriminant. We define a related polynomial called the multivariate iterated discriminant, generalizing the classical Schäfli method for hyperdeterminants. This iterated discriminant is easier to compute and we prove that it is always divisible by the mixed discriminant. We show that tangent intersections can be computed via iteration if and onl…
Varieties of Nodal surfaces, coding theory and Discriminants of cubic hypersurfaces. Part 1: Generalities and nodal K3 surfaces. Part 2: Cubic Hypersurfaces, associated discriminants. Part 3: Nodal quintics. Part 4: Nodal sextics
We study the geometry of projective manifolds whose tangent bundles are nef on sufficiently general curves (i.e. the tangent bundle is generically nef) and show that manifolds whose anticanonical bundles are semi-ample have this property. Furthermore we introduce a notion of sufficient nefness and investigate the relation with manifolds whose anticanonical bundles are nef.
This survey paper discusses some of the recent progress in the study of rational curves on algebraic varieties. It was written for the survey volume of the priority programme "Global Methods in Complex Geometry", supported by the DFG. To start, we discuss existence results for rational curves on foliated manifolds. We construct the tangent morphism, define the variety of minimal rational tangents (VMRT) and name a number of results that show that many of the geometry properies of a uniruled variety are encoded in the projective geometry of the VMRT. The results are then applied in two differen…
The family of varieties of minimal rational tangents on a quasi-homogeneous projective manifold is isotrivial. Conversely, are projective manifolds with isotrivial varieties of minimal rational tangents quasi-homogenous? We will show that this is not true in general, even when the projective manifold has Picard number 1. In fact, an isotrivial family of varieties of minimal rational tangents needs not be locally flat in differential geometric sense. This leads to the question for which projective variety Z, the Z-isotriviality of varieties of minimal rational tangents implies local flatness. O…
We formulate the equivalence problem, in the sense of E. Cartan, for families of minimal rational curves on uniruled projective manifolds. An important invariant of this equivalence problem is the variety of minimal rational tangents. We study the case when varieties of minimal rational tangents at general points form an isotrivial family. The main question in this case is for which projective variety $Z$, a family of minimal rational curves with $Z$-isotrivial varieties of minimal rational tangents is locally equivalent to the flat model. We show that this is the case when $Z$ satisfies certa…
We show that the way in which Betti cohomology varies in a proper family of complex algebraic varieties is controlled by certain "higher discriminants" in the base. These discriminants are defined in terms of transversality conditions, which in the case of a morphism between smooth varieties can be checked by a tangent space calculation. They control the variation of cohomology in the following two senses: (1) the support of any summand of the pushforward of the IC sheaf along a projective map is a component of a higher discriminant, and (2) any component of the characteristic cycle of the pro…
We use Matsui and Takeuchi's formula for toric A-discriminants to give algorithms for computing local Euler obstructions and dual degrees of toric surfaces and 3-folds. In particular, we consider weighted projective spaces. As an application we give counterexamples to a conjecture by Matsui and Takeuchi. As another application we recover the well-known fact that the only defective normal toric surfaces are cones.
Let $G$ be a complex reductive algebraic group, $T$ a maximal torus in $G$, $B$ a Borel subgroup of $G$ containing $T$, $W$ the Weyl group of $G$ with respect to $T$. Let $w$ be an element of $W$. Denote by $X_w$ the Schubert subvariety of the flag variety $G/B$ corresponding to $w$. Let $C_w$ be the tangent cone to $X_w$ at the point $p=eB$ (we consider $C_w$ as a subscheme of the tangent space to $G/B$ at $p$). In 2011, D.Yu. Eliseev and A.N. Panov computed all tangent cones for $G=SL(n)$, $n<6$. Using their computations, A.N. Panov formulated the following Conjecture: if $w$, $w'$ are disti…
