The Hilbert scheme $X^{[3]}$ of length-3 subschemes of a smooth projective variety $X$ is known to be smooth and projective. We investigate whether the property of having a multiplicative Chow–Künneth decomposition is stable under taking the Hilbert cube. This is achieved by considering an explicit resolution of the rational map $X^{3}{\dashrightarrow}X^{[3]}$. The case of the Hilbert square was taken care of in Shen and Vial [Mem. Amer. Math. Soc.240(1139) (2016), vii+163 pp]. The archetypical examples of varieties endowed with a multiplicative Chow–Künneth decomposition is given by abelian varieties. Recent work seems to suggest that hyperKähler varieties share the same property. Roughly, if a smooth projective variety $X$ has a multiplicative Chow–Künneth decomposition, then the Chow rings of its powers $X^{n}$ have a filtration, which is the expected Bloch–Beilinson filtration, that is split.

The Hilbert scheme $X^{[a]}$ of points on a complex manifold $X$ is a compactification of the configuration space of $a$ -element subsets of $X$ . The integral cohomology of $X^{[a]}$ is more subtle than the rational cohomology. In this paper, we compute the mod 2 cohomology of $X^{[2]}$ for any complex manifold $X$ , and the integral cohomology of $X^{[2]}$ when $X$ has torsion-free cohomology.

This is the second in a sequence of papers on the geometry of spaces of rational curves of degree e on a general hypersurface $X \subset\mathbb{P}^n$ of degree d. In Part I (J. reine angew. Math. 571 (2004), 73–106) it is proved that, if $d<({n+1})/{2}$, then for each e the space of rational curves is irreducible, reduced and has the expected dimension. In this paper it is proved that, if $d^2 + d + 1 \leq n$, then for each e the space of rational curves is a rationally connected variety; in particular it has negative Kodaira dimension.