In this paper a new geometric characterization of the $n$th symmetric product of a curve is given. Specifically, we assume that there exists a chain of smooth subvarieties $V_{i}$ of dimension $i$, such that $V_{i}$ is an ample divisor in $V_{i+1}$ and its intersection product with $V_{1}$ is one; that the Albanese dimension of $V_{2}$ is $2$ and the genus of $V_{1}$ is equal to the irregularity of the variety. We prove that in this case the variety is isomorphic to the symmetric product of a curve.

In this article, we consider the conjectured relationship between $F$-purity and log canonicity for polynomials over $\mathbb{C}$. In particular, we show that log canonicity corresponds to dense $F$-pure type for all polynomials whose supporting monomials satisfy a certain nondegeneracy condition. We also show that log canonicity corresponds to dense $F$-pure type for very general polynomials over $\mathbb{C}$. Our methods rely on showing that the $F$-pure and log canonical thresholds agree for infinitely many primes, and we accomplish this by comparing these thresholds with the thresholds associated to their monomial term ideals.

Let $(X,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5})$ be an $n$-dimensional $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$-klt log $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano pair. We give an upper bound for the volume $\text{Vol}(X,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5})=(-(K_{X}+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}))^{n}$ when $n=2$, or $n=3$ and $X$ is $\mathbb{Q}$-factorial of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}(X)=1$. This bound is essentially sharp for $n=2$. The main idea is to analyze the covering families of tigers constructed in J. McKernan (Boundedness of log terminal fano pairs of bounded index, preprint, 2002, arXiv:0205214). Existence of an upper bound for volumes is related to the Borisov–Alexeev–Borisov Conjecture, which asserts boundedness of the set of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$-klt log $\mathbb{Q}$-Fano varieties of a given dimension $n$.

We study the automorphisms of the nonsplit Cartan modular curves $X_{\text{ns}}(p)$ of prime level $p$. We prove that if $p\geqslant 29$ all the automorphisms preserve the cusps. Furthermore, if $p\equiv 1~\text{mod}~12$ and $p\neq 13$, the automorphism group is generated by the modular involution given by the normalizer of a nonsplit Cartan subgroup of $\text{GL}_{2}(\mathbb{F}_{p})$. We also prove that for every $p\geqslant 29$ the existence of an exceptional rational automorphism would give rise to an exceptional rational point on the modular curve $X_{\text{ns}}^{+}(p)$ associated to the normalizer of a nonsplit Cartan subgroup of $\text{GL}_{2}(\mathbb{F}_{p})$.

Let $\mathbf{G}$ be a connected reductive algebraic group over an algebraic closure $\overline{\mathbb{F}_{p}}$ of the finite field of prime order $p$ and let $F:\mathbf{G}\rightarrow \mathbf{G}$ be a Frobenius endomorphism with $G=\mathbf{G}^{F}$ the corresponding $\mathbb{F}_{q}$-rational structure. One of the strongest links we have between the representation theory of $G$ and the geometry of the unipotent conjugacy classes of $\mathbf{G}$ is a formula, due to Lusztig (Adv. Math. 94(2) (1992), 139–179), which decomposes Kawanaka’s Generalized Gelfand–Graev Representations (GGGRs) in terms of characteristic functions of intersection cohomology complexes defined on the closure of a unipotent class. Unfortunately, the formula given in Lusztig (Adv. Math. 94(2) (1992), 139–179) is only valid under the assumption that $p$ is large enough. In this article, we show that Lusztig’s formula for GGGRs holds under the much milder assumption that $p$ is an acceptable prime for $\mathbf{G}$ ($p$ very good is sufficient but not necessary). As an application we show that every irreducible character of $G$, respectively, character sheaf of $\mathbf{G}$, has a unique wave front set, respectively, unipotent support, whenever $p$ is good for $\mathbf{G}$.

Our object of study is a rational map  defined by homogeneous forms $g_{1},\ldots ,g_{n}$ , of the same degree $d$ , in the homogeneous coordinate ring $R=k[x_{1},\ldots ,x_{s}]$ of $\mathbb{P}_{k}^{s-1}$ . Our goal is to relate properties of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}$ , of the homogeneous coordinate ring $A=k[g_{1},\ldots ,g_{n}]$ of the variety parameterized by $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}$ , and of the Rees algebra ${\mathcal{R}}(I)$ , the bihomogeneous coordinate ring of the graph of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}$ . For a regular map $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}$ , for instance, we prove that ${\mathcal{R}}(I)$ satisfies Serre’s condition $R_{i}$ , for some $i>0$ , if and only if $A$ satisfies $R_{i-1}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}$ is birational onto its image. Thus, in particular, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F9}$ is birational onto its image if and only if ${\mathcal{R}}(I)$ satisfies $R_{1}$ . Either condition has implications for the shape of the core, namely, $\text{core}(I)$ is the multiplier ideal of $I^{s}$ and $\text{core}(I)=(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{s})^{sd-s+1}.$ Conversely, for $s=2$ , either equality for the core implies birationality. In addition, by means of the generalized rows of the syzygy matrix of $g_{1},\ldots ,g_{n}$ , we give an explicit method to reduce the nonbirational case to the birational one when $s=2$ .