We define and study a family of cubic surfaces in the projectivized tangent bundle over a four dimensional projective space associated to the root system D_5. The 27 lines are rational over the base and we determine the classifying map to the moduli space of marked cubic surfaces. This map has degree two and we use it to get short proofs for some results on the Chow group of the moduli space of marked cubic surfaces.
The relation between the uniformizing equation of the complex hyperbolic structure on the moduli space of marked cubic surfaces and an Appell-Lauricella hypergeometric system in nine variables is clarified.
Naruki gave an explicit construction of the moduli space of marked cubic surfaces, starting from a toric variety and proceeding with blow ups and contractions. Using his result, we compute the Chow groups and the Chern classes of this moduli space.As an application we relate a recent result of Freitag on the Hilbert polynomial of a certain ring of modular forms to the Riemann-Roch theorem for the moduli space.
Allcock and Freitag recently showed that the moduli space of marked cubic surfaces is a subvariety of a nine dimensional projective space which is defined by cubic equations. They used the theory of automorphic forms on ball quotients to obtain these results. Here we describe the same embedding using Naruki's toric model of the moduli space. We also give an explicit parametrization of the tritangent divisors, we discuss another way to find equations for the image and we show that the moduli space maps, with degree at least ten, onto the unique quintic hypersurface in a five dimensional project…
We prove that the space of pairs $(X,l)$ formed by a real non-singular cubic hypersurface $X\subset P^4$ with a real line $l\subset X$ has 18 connected components and give for them several quite explicit interpretations. The first one relates these components to the orbits of the monodromy action on the set of connected components of the Fano surface $F_\mathbb{R}(X)$ formed by real lines on $X$. For another interpretation we associate with each of the 18 components a well defined real deformation class of real non-singular plane quintic curves and show that this deformation class together wit…
For the general monic cubic and quartic with real coefficients, polynomial conditions on the coefficients are derived as directly and as simply as possible from the Sturm sequence that will determine the real and complex root multiplicities together with the order of the real roots with respect to multiplicity.
An explicit projective embedding of the moduli space of marked cubic surfaces is given. This embedding is equivariant under the Weyl group of type E6. The image is defined by a system of linear and cubic equations. To express the embedding in a most symmetric way, the target would be 79-dimensional, however the image lies in a 9-dimensional linear subspace.
For a cubic surface X, by considering the intermediate Jacobian J(Y) of the triple covering Y of the 3-dimensional projective space branching along X, Allcock, Carlson and Toledo constructed a period map per from the family of marked cubic surfaces to the four dimensional complex ball embedded in the Siegel upper half space of degree 5. We give an expression of the inverse of per in terms of theta constants by constructing an isomorphism between J(Y) and a Prym variety of a cyclic 6-ple covering of the projective line branching at seven points.
We shall show the existence of 15 automorphic forms of weight 8 on the moduli space of marked Hessian quartic surfaces of cubic surfaces. These automorphic forms can be interpreted in terms of the coefficients of the Sylvester form of a general cubic surface.
Let $Q(α)$ be the simplest cubic field, it is known that $Q(α)$ can be generated by adjoining a root of the irreducible equation $x^{3}-kx^{2}+(k-3)x+1=0$, where $k$ belongs to $Q$. In this paper we have established a relationship between $α$, $α'$ and $k,k'$ where $α$ is a root of the equation $x^{3}-kx^{2}+(k-3)x+1=0$ and $α'$ is a root of the same equation with $k$ replaced by $k'$ and $Q(α)=Q(α')$.
We show that the moduli space M of marked cubic surfaces is biholomorphic to the quotient by a discrete group generated by complex reflections of the complex four-ball minus the reflection hyperplanes of the group. Thus M carries a complex hyperbolic structure: an (incomplete) metric of constant holomorphic sectional curvature.
Coble defined in his 1929 treatise invariants for cubic surfaces and quartic curves. We reinterpret these in terms of the root systems of type E_6 and E_7 that are naturally associated to these varieties, thereby giving some of his results a more intrinsic treatment. Our discussion is uniform for all Del Pezzo surfaces of degree 2,3,4 and 5.
We consider cubic polynomials f(z)=z^3+az+b defined over the function field C(L), with a marked point of period N and multiplier L. In the case N=1, there are infinitely many such objects, and in the case N>2, only finitely many. The case N=2 has particularly rich structure, and we are able to describe all such cubic polynomials defined over the field obtained by adjoining to C the mth roots of L, for all L.
We study the moduli space $\widetilde{\calM}$ of marked cubic surfaces. By classical work of A.\,B. Coble, this has a compactification $\widetilde{M}$, which is linearly acted upon by the group $W(E_6)$. $\widetilde{M}$ is given as the intersection of 30 cubics in $\bP^9$. For the morphism $\widetilde{calM} \to \bP(1,2,3,4,5)$ forgetting the marking, followed by Clebsch's invariant map, we give explicit formulas. I.e., Clebsch's invariants are expressed in terms of Coble's irrational invariants. As an application, we give an affirmative answer to the inverse Galois problem for cubic surfaces o…
We give a functorial normal crossing compactification of the moduli of smooth marked cubic surfaces entirely analogous to the Grothendieck-Knudsen compactification $M_{0,n} \subset \bar{M}_{0,n}$.
The classical statement of Cayley-Salmon that there are 27 lines on every smooth cubic surface in P^3 fails to hold under tropicalization: a tropical cubic surface in TP^3 often contains infinitely many tropical lines. Under mild genericity assumptions, we show that when embedded using the Eckardt triangles in the anticanonical system, tropical cubic del Pezzo surfaces contain exactly 27 tropical lines. In the non-generic case, which we identify explicitly, we find up to 27 extra lines, no multiple of which lifts to a curve on the cubic surface. We realize the moduli space of stable anticanoni…
Interest in Conformal Field Theories and Quantum Field Theory lead physicists to consider configuration spaces of marked points on the complex projective line, $Conf_{0,d}(\mathbb{P})$. In this paper, a real semi-algebraic stratification of $Conf_{0,d}(\mathbb{C})$, invariant under Coxeter-Weyl group is constructed, using the natural relation of this configuration space with the space $Dpol_d$ of complex monic degree $d>0$ polynomials in one variable with simple roots. This decomposition relies on subsets of $Dpol_d$ forming a good cover in the sense of Cech of $Dpol_d$ and such that each piec…
We give an explicit formula for the $27$ lines of a smooth cubic surface near the Fermat surface. Our formula involves convergent power series with coefficients in the extension of rational numbers with the sixth root of unity. Our main tool is the Artinian Gorenstein ring of socle two attached to such lines.
Let $k$ be a field of characteristic zero containing a primitive fifth root of unity. Let $X/k$ be a smooth cubic threefold with an automorphism of order five, then we observe that over a finite extension of the field actually the dihedral group $D_5$ is a subgroup of ${\rm Aut}(X)$. We find that the intermediate Jacobian $J(X)$ of $X$ is isogenous to the product of an elliptic curve $E$ and the self-product of an abelian surface $B$ with real multiplication by $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{5})$. We give explicit models of some algebraic curves related to the construction of $J(X)$ as a Prym variety. This…
We consider Sklyanin algebras $S$ with 3 generators, which are quadratic algebras over a field $\K$ with $3$ generators $x,y,z$ given by $3$ relations $pxy+qyx+rzz=0$, $pyz+qzy+rxx=0$ and $pzx+qxz+ryy=0$, where $p,q,r\in\K$. This class of algebras has enjoyed much attention. In particular, using tools from algebraic geometry Artin, Tate and Van Den Berg \cite{ATV2} showed that if at least two of the parameters $p$, $q$ and $r$ are non-zero and at least two of three numbers $p^3$, $q^3$ and $r^3$ are distinct, then $S$ is Artin--Schelter regular. More specifically, $S$ is Koszul and has the sam…