We consider plane Cremona maps with proper base points and the base ideal generated by the linear system of forms defining the map. The object of this work is to study the link between the algebraic properties of the base ideal and those of the ideal of these points fattened by the virtual multiplicities arising from the linear system. We reveal conditions which naturally regulate this association, with particular emphasis on the homological side. While most classical numerical inequalities concern the three highest virtual multiplicities, here we emphasize also the role of one single highest multiplicity. In this vein we describe classes of Cremona maps for large and small values of the highest virtual multiplicity. We also deal with the delicate question as to when is the base ideal non-saturated and consider the structure of its saturation.

For a variety with a Whitney stratification by affine spaces, we study categories of motivic sheaves which are constant mixed Tate along the strata. We are particularly interested in those cases where the category of mixed Tate motives over a point is equivalent to the category of finite-dimensional bigraded vector spaces. Examples of such situations include rational motives on varieties over finite fields and modules over the spectrum representing the semisimplification of de Rham cohomology for varieties over the complex numbers. We show that our categories of stratified mixed Tate motives have a natural weight structure. Under an additional assumption of pointwise purity for objects of the heart, tilting gives an equivalence between stratified mixed Tate sheaves and the bounded homotopy category of the heart of the weight structure. Specializing to the case of flag varieties, we find natural geometric interpretations of graded category ${\mathcal{O}}$ and Koszul duality.

Using the inductive structure of a Fermat variety by Shioda and Katsura [‘On Fermat varieties’, Tohoku Math. J. (2) 31(1) (1979), 97–115], we estimate the refined motivic dimension of certain Fermat varieties. As an application of our computation, we present an elementary proof of the generalised Hodge conjecture for those varieties.

We prove modularity of formal series of Jacobi forms that satisfy a natural symmetry condition. They are formal analogs of Fourier–Jacobi expansions of Siegel modular forms. From our result and a theorem of Wei Zhang, we deduce Kudla’s conjecture on the modularity of generating series of special cycles of arbitrary codimension and for all orthogonal Shimura varieties.

We define a theory of étale motives over a noetherian scheme. This provides a system of categories of complexes of motivic sheaves with integral coefficients which is closed under the six operations of Grothendieck. The rational part of these categories coincides with the triangulated categories of Beilinson motives (and is thus strongly related to algebraic $K$-theory). We extend the rigidity theorem of Suslin and Voevodsky over a general base scheme. This can be reformulated by saying that torsion étale motives essentially coincide with the usual complexes of torsion étale sheaves (at least if we restrict ourselves to torsion prime to the residue characteristics). As a consequence, we obtain the expected results of absolute purity, of finiteness, and of Grothendieck duality for étale motives with integral coefficients, by putting together their counterparts for Beilinson motives and for torsion étale sheaves. Following Thomason’s insights, this also provides a conceptual and convenient construction of the $\ell$-adic realization of motives, as the homotopy $\ell$-completion functor.

In this note we study properties of partially ample line bundles on simplicial projective toric varieties. We prove that the cone of q-ample line bundles is a union of rational polyhedral cones, and calculate these cones in examples. We prove a restriction theorem for big q-ample line bundles, and deduce that q-ampleness of the anticanonical bundle is not invariant under flips. Finally we prove a Kodaira-type vanishing theorem for q-ample line bundles.

Let τ be the involution changing the sign of two coordinates in ℙ4. We prove that τ induces the identity action on the second Chow group of the intersection of a τ-invariant cubic with a τ-invariant quadric hypersurface in ℙ4. Let lτ and Πτ be the one- and two-dimensional components of the fixed locus of the involution τ. We describe the generalized Prymian associated with the projection of a τ-invariant cubic 𝓵 ⊂ P4 from lτ onto Πτ in terms of the Prymians 𝓅2 and 𝓅 3 associated with the double covers of two irreducible components, of degree 2 and 3, respectively, of the reducible discriminant curve. This gives a precise description of the induced action of the involution τ on the continuous part of the Chow group CH2 (𝓵). The action on the subgroup corresponding to 𝓅 3 is the identity, and the action on the subgroup corresponding to 𝓅 2 is the multiplication by —1.

For $n=2$ the statement in the title is a theorem of B. Poonen (2009). He uses a one-parameter family of varieties together with a theorem of Coray, Sansuc and one of the authors (1980), on the Brauer–Manin obstruction for rational points on these varieties. For $n=p$, $p$ any prime number, A. Várilly-Alvarado and B. Viray (2012) considered analogous families of varieties. Replacing this family by its $(2p+1)$th symmetric power, we prove the statement in the title using a theorem on the Brauer–Manin obstruction for rational points on such symmetric powers. The latter theorem is based on work of one of the authors with Swinnerton-Dyer (1994) and with Skorobogatov and Swinnerton-Dyer (1998), work generalising results of Salberger (1988).

We give explicit formulas for the Hilbert series of residual intersections of a scheme in terms of the Hilbert series of its conormal modules. In a previous paper, we proved that such formulas should exist. We give applications to the number of equations defining projective varieties and to the dimension of secant varieties of surfaces and three-folds.

Consider a smooth quasi-projective variety $X$ equipped with a $\mathbb{C}^{\ast }$-action, and a regular function $f:X\rightarrow \mathbb{C}$ which is $\mathbb{C}^{\ast }$-equivariant with respect to a positive weight action on the base. We prove the purity of the mixed Hodge structure and the hard Lefschetz theorem on the cohomology of the vanishing cycle complex of $f$ on proper components of the critical locus of $f$, generalizing a result of Steenbrink for isolated quasi-homogeneous singularities. Building on work by Kontsevich and Soibelman, Nagao, and Efimov, we use this result to prove the quantum positivity conjecture for cluster mutations for all quivers admitting a positively graded nondegenerate potential. We deduce quantum positivity for all quivers of rank at most 4; quivers with nondegenerate potential admitting a cut; and quivers with potential associated to triangulations of surfaces with marked points and nonempty boundary.

Assuming the Tate conjecture and the computability of étale cohomology with finite coefficients, we give an algorithm that computes the Néron–Severi group of any smooth projective geometrically integral variety, and also the rank of the group of numerical equivalence classes of codimension $p$ cycles for any $p$.

The goal of this paper is to prove that if certain ‘standard’ conjectures on motives over algebraically closed fields hold, then over any ‘reasonable’ scheme $S$ there exists a motivic$t$-structure for the category $\text{DM}_{c}(S)$ of relative Voevodsky’s motives (to be more precise, for the Beilinson motives described by Cisinski and Deglise). If $S$ is of finite type over a field, then the heart of this $t$-structure (the category of mixed motivic sheaves over $S$) is endowed with a weight filtration with semisimple factors. We also prove a certain ‘motivic decomposition theorem’ (assuming the conjectures mentioned) and characterize semisimple motivic sheaves over $S$ in terms of those over its residue fields. Our main tool is the theory of weight structures. We actually prove somewhat more than the existence of a weight filtration for mixed motivic sheaves: we prove that the motivic $t$-structure is transversal to the Chow weight structure for $\text{DM}_{c}(S)$ (that was introduced previously by Hébert and the author). We also deduce several properties of mixed motivic sheaves from this fact. Our reasoning relies on the degeneration of Chow weight spectral sequences for ‘perverse étale homology’ (which we prove unconditionally); this statement also yields the existence of the Chow weight filtration for such (co)homology that is strictly restricted by (‘motivic’) morphisms.

Let $A$ be an abelian variety defined over a field $k$. In this paper we define a descending filtration $\{F^{r}\}_{r\geqslant 0}$ of the group $\mathit{CH}_{0}(A)$ and prove that the successive quotients $F^{r}/F^{r+1}\otimes \mathbb{Z}[1/r!]$ are isomorphic to the group $(K(k;A,\dots ,A)/Sym)\otimes \mathbb{Z}[1/r!]$, where $K(k;A,\dots ,A)$ is the Somekawa $K$-group attached to $r$-copies of the abelian variety $A$. In the special case when $k$ is a finite extension of $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$ and $A$ has split multiplicative reduction, we compute the kernel of the map $\mathit{CH}_{0}(A)\otimes \mathbb{Z}[\frac{1}{2}]\rightarrow \text{Hom}(Br(A),\mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z})\otimes \mathbb{Z}[\frac{1}{2}]$, induced by the pairing $\mathit{CH}_{0}(A)\times Br(A)\rightarrow \mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z}$.

We consider higher secant varieties to Veronese varieties. Most points on the rth secant variety are represented by a finite scheme of length r contained in the Veronese variety – in fact, for a general point, the scheme is just a union of r distinct points. A modern way to phrase it is: the smoothable rank is equal to the border rank for most polynomials. This property is very useful for studying secant varieties, especially, whenever the smoothable rank is equal to the border rank for all points of the secant variety in question. In this note, we investigate those special points for which the smoothable rank is not equal to the border rank. In particular, we show an explicit example of a cubic in five variables with border rank 5 and smoothable rank 6. We also prove that all cubics in at most four variables have the smoothable rank equal to the border rank.

We construct a cohomology theory using quasi-smooth derived schemes as generators and an analog of the bordism relation using derived fiber products as relations. This theory has pull-backs along all morphisms between smooth schemes independent of any characteristic assumptions. We prove that, in characteristic zero, the resulting theory agrees with algebraic cobordism as defined by Levine and Morel. We thus obtain a new set of generators and relations for algebraic cobordism.

We study the interplay between the cohomology of the Koszul complex of the partial derivatives of a homogeneous polynomial f and the pole order filtration P on the cohomology of the open set U = ℙn \ D, with D the hypersurface defined by f = 0. The relation is expressed by some spectral sequences. These sequences may, on the one hand, in many cases be used to determine the filtration P for curves and surfaces and, on the other hand, to obtain information about the syzygies involving the partial derivatives of the polynomial f. The case of a nodal hypersurface D is treated in terms of the defects of linear systems of hypersurfaces of various degrees passing through the nodes of D. When D is a nodal surface in ℙ3, we show that F2H3(U) ≠ P2H3(U) as soon as the degree of D is at least 4.

We prove the integral Tate conjecture for cycles of codimension $2$ on smooth cubic fourfolds over an algebraic closure of a field finitely generated over its prime subfield and of characteristic different from $2$ or $3$. The proof relies on the Tate conjecture with rational coefficients, proved in that setting by the first author, and on an argument of Voisin coming from complex geometry.

We study a Hermitian form $h$ over a quaternion division algebra $Q$ over a field ($h$ is supposed to be alternating if the characteristic of the field is two). For generic $h$ and $Q$, for any integer $i\in [1,\;n/2]$, where $n:=\dim _{Q}h$, we show that the variety of $i$-dimensional (over $Q$) totally isotropic right subspaces of $h$ is $2$-incompressible. The proof is based on a computation of the Chow ring for the classifying space of a certain parabolic subgroup in a split simple adjoint affine algebraic group of type $C_{n}$. As an application, we determine the smallest value of the $J$-invariant of a non-degenerate quadratic form divisible by a $2$-fold Pfister form; we also determine the biggest values of the canonical dimensions of the orthogonal Grassmannians associated to such quadratic forms.

A trisymplectic structure on a complex $2n$-manifold is a three-dimensional space ${\rm\Omega}$ of closed holomorphic forms such that any element of ${\rm\Omega}$ has constant rank $2n$, $n$ or zero, and degenerate forms in ${\rm\Omega}$ belong to a non-degenerate quadric hypersurface. We show that a trisymplectic manifold is equipped with a holomorphic 3-web and the Chern connection of this 3-web is holomorphic, torsion-free, and preserves the three symplectic forms. We construct a trisymplectic structure on the moduli of regular rational curves in the twistor space of a hyperkähler manifold, and define a trisymplectic reduction of a trisymplectic manifold, which is a complexified form of a hyperkähler reduction. We prove that the trisymplectic reduction in the space of regular rational curves on the twistor space of a hyperkähler manifold $M$ is compatible with the hyperkähler reduction on $M$. As an application of these geometric ideas, we consider the ADHM construction of instantons and show that the moduli space of rank $r$, charge $c$ framed instanton bundles on $\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^{3}$ is a smooth trisymplectic manifold of complex dimension $4rc$. In particular, it follows that the moduli space of rank two, charge $c$ instanton bundles on $\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^{3}$ is a smooth complex manifold dimension $8c-3$, thus settling part of a 30-year-old conjecture.

We construct explicit $K3$ surfaces over $\mathbb{Q}$ having real multiplication. Our examples are of geometric Picard rank 16. The standard method for the computation of the Picard rank provably fails for the surfaces constructed.