The $4 n^2$-inequality for smooth points plays an important role in the proofs of birational (super)rigidity. The main aim of this paper is to generalize such an inequality to terminal singular points of type $cA_1$, and obtain a $2 n^2$-inequality for $cA_1$ points. As applications, we prove birational (super)rigidity of sextic double solids, many other prime Fano 3-fold weighted complete intersections, and del Pezzo fibrations of degree $1$ over $\mathbb {P}^1$ satisfying the $K^2$-condition, all of which have at most terminal $cA_1$ singularities and terminal quotient singularities. These give first examples of birationally (super)rigid Fano 3-folds and del Pezzo fibrations admitting a $cA_1$ point which is not an ordinary double point.

We give conditions for a uniruled variety of dimension at least 2 to be nonsolid. This study provides further evidence to a conjecture by Abban and Okada on the solidity of Fano 3-folds. To complement our results we write explicit birational links from Fano 3-folds of high codimension embedded in weighted projective spaces.

Let $X_4\subset \mathbb {P}^{n+1}$ be a quartic hypersurface of dimension $n\geq 4$ over an infinite field k. We show that if either $X_4$ contains a linear subspace $\Lambda $ of dimension $h\geq \max \{2,\dim (\Lambda \cap \operatorname {\mathrm {Sing}}(X_4))+2\}$ or has double points along a linear subspace of dimension $h\geq 3$ , a smooth k-rational point and is otherwise general, then $X_4$ is unirational over k. This improves previous results by A. Predonzan and J. Harris, B. Mazur and R. Pandharipande for quartics. We also provide a density result for the k-rational points of quartic $3$ -folds with a double plane over a number field, and several unirationality results for quintic hypersurfaces over a $C_r$ field.

We prove rationality criteria over nonclosed fields of characteristic $0$ for five out of six types of geometrically rational Fano threefolds of Picard number $1$ and geometric Picard number bigger than $1$. For the last type of such threefolds, we provide a unirationality criterion and construct examples of unirational but not stably rational varieties of this type.

In this paper, we prove that if a compact Kähler manifold X has a smooth Hermitian metric $\omega $ such that $(T_X,\omega )$ is uniformly RC-positive, then X is projective and rationally connected. Conversely, we show that, if a projective manifold X is rationally connected, then there exists a uniformly RC-positive complex Finsler metric on $T_X$ .

Let k be a field, $x_1, \dots , x_n$ be independent variables and let $L_n = k(x_1, \dots , x_n)$ . The symmetric group $\operatorname {\Sigma }_n$ acts on $L_n$ by permuting the variables, and the projective linear group $\operatorname {PGL}_2$ acts by

$$ \begin{align*} \begin{pmatrix} a & b \\ c & d \end{pmatrix}\, \colon x_i \longmapsto \frac{a x_i + b}{c x_i + d} \end{align*} $$

$i = 1, \dots , n$

$L_n^{\operatorname {PGL}_2}$

$S \subset \operatorname {\Sigma }_n$

$L_n^S$

$K_n^S$

$n \geqslant 5,$

$L_n^S$

$K_n^S$

$\{ 1, \dots , n \}$

$n \leqslant 4$

For any prime number $p$ and field $k$, we characterize the $p$-retract rationality of an algebraic $k$-torus in terms of its character lattice. We show that a $k$-torus is retract rational if and only if it is $p$-retract rational for every prime $p$, and that the Noether problem for retract rationality for a group of multiplicative type $G$ has an affirmative answer for $G$ if and only if the Noether problem for $p$-retract rationality for $G$ has a positive answer for all $p$. For every finite set of primes $S$ we give examples of tori that are $p$-retract rational if and only if $p\notin S$.

For a general Fano 3-fold of index 1 in the weighted projective space ℙ(1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3) we construct two new birational models that are Mori fibre spaces in the framework of the so-called Sarkisov program. We highlight a relation between the corresponding birational maps, as a circle of Sarkisov links, visualizing the notion of relations in the Sarkisov program.

We classify all (abstract) homomorphisms from the group $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}{\sf PGL}_{r+1}(\mathbf{C})$ to the group ${\sf Bir}(M)$ of birational transformations of a complex projective variety $M$, provided that $r\geq \dim _\mathbf{C}(M)$. As a byproduct, we show that: (i) ${\sf Bir}(\mathbb{P}^n_\mathbf{C})$ is isomorphic, as an abstract group, to ${\sf Bir}(\mathbb{P}^m_\mathbf{C})$ if and only if $n=m$; and (ii) $M$ is rational if and only if ${\sf PGL}_{\dim (M)+1}(\mathbf{C})$ embeds as a subgroup of ${\sf Bir}(M)$.

We show that a standard conic bundle over a minimal rational surface is rational and its Jacobian splits as the direct sum of Jacobians of curves if and only if its derived category admits a semiorthogonal decomposition by exceptional objects and the derived categories of those curves. Moreover, such a decomposition gives the splitting of the intermediate Jacobian also when the surface is not minimal.

We prove that the quotient by ${\mathrm{SL} }_{2} \times {\mathrm{SL} }_{2} $ of the space of bidegree $(a, b)$ curves on ${ \mathbb{P} }^{1} \times { \mathbb{P} }^{1} $ is rational when $ab$ is even and $a\not = b$.

We consider the problem of whether the norm one torus defined by a finite separable field extension K/k is stably (or retract) rational over k. This has already been solved for the case where K/k is a Galois extension. In this paper, we solve the problem for the case where K/k is a non-Galois extension such that the Galois group of the Galois closure of K/k is nilpotent or metacyclic.

Let k be a field of characteristic zero, let G be a connected reductive algebraic group over k and let 𝔤 be its Lie algebra. Let k(G), respectively, k(𝔤), be the field of k-rational functions on G, respectively, 𝔤. The conjugation action of G on itself induces the adjoint action of G on 𝔤. We investigate the question whether or not the field extensions k(G)/k(G)G and k(𝔤)/k(𝔤)G are purely transcendental. We show that the answer is the same for k(G)/k(G)G and k(𝔤)/k(𝔤)G, and reduce the problem to the case where G is simple. For simple groups we show that the answer is positive if G is split of type An or Cn, and negative for groups of other types, except possibly G2. A key ingredient in the proof of the negative result is a recent formula for the unramified Brauer group of a homogeneous space with connected stabilizers. As a byproduct of our investigation we give an affirmative answer to a question of Grothendieck about the existence of a rational section of the categorical quotient morphism for the conjugating action of G on itself.

We compute a class of Sarkisov links from Fano 3-folds embedded in weighted Grassmannians using explicit methods for describing graded rings associated to a variation of geometric invariant theory (GIT) quotient.

We show that polarized endomorphisms of rationally connected threefolds with at worst terminal singularities are equivariantly built up from those on ℚ-Fano threefolds, Gorenstein log del Pezzo surfaces and ℙ1. Similar results are obtained for polarized endomorphisms of uniruled threefolds and fourfolds. As a consequence, we show that every smooth Fano threefold with a polarized endomorphism of degree greater than one is rational.

The aim of this paper is to construct (i) infinitely many families of nonrational ℚ-Fano varieties of arbitrary dimension ≥ 4 with at most quotient singularities, and (ii) twelve families of nonrational ℚ-Fano threefolds with at most terminal singularities among which two are new and the remaining ten give an alternate proof of nonrationality to known examples. These are constructed as weighted hypersurfaces with the reduction mod p method introduced by Kollár [10].

It is shown that a $\scriptstyle \overline {\mathbb Q}$-curve of genus $g$ and with stable reduction (in some generalized sense) at every finite place outside a finite set $S$ can be defined over a finite extension $L$ of its field of moduli $K$ depending only on $g$, $S$ and $K$. Furthermore, there exist $L$-models that inherit all places of good and stable reduction of the original curve (except possibly for finitely many exceptional places depending on $g$, $K$ and $S$). This descent result yields this moduli form of the Shafarevich conjecture: given $g$, $K$ and $S$ as above, only finitely many $K$-points on the moduli space ${\cal M}_g$ correspond to $\scriptstyle \overline {\mathbb Q}$-curves of genus $g$ and with good reduction outside $S$. Other applications to arithmetic geometry, like a modular generalization of the Mordell conjecture, are given.