We show that Miyaoka’s bound for the number of conics on a degree-$2h$ K3 surface is attained for high h, and analogously for higher even degree (smooth) rational curves.

We find all K-polystable limits of smooth Fano threefolds in family 3.10.

We study the locus of smooth hypersurfaces inside the Hilbert scheme of a smooth projective complex variety. In the spirit of scanning, we construct a map to a continuous section space of a projective bundle, and show that it induces an isomorphism in integral homology in a range of degrees growing with the ampleness of the hypersurfaces. When the ambient variety is a curve, this recovers a result of McDuff about configuration spaces. We compute the rational cohomology of the section space and exhibit a homological stability phenomenon for hypersurfaces with first Chern class going to infinity. For simply connected varieties, the rational cohomology is shown to agree with the stable cohomology of a moduli space of hypersurfaces, with a peculiar tangential structure, as studied by Galatius and Randal-Williams.

For any power q of the positive ground field characteristic, a smooth q-bic threefold—the Fermat threefold of degree $q+1$, for example—has a smooth surface S of lines which behaves like the Fano surface of a smooth cubic threefold. I develop projective, moduli-theoretic, and degeneration techniques to study the geometry of S. Using, in addition, the modular representation theory of the finite unitary group and the geometric theory of filtrations, I compute the cohomology of the structure sheaf of S when q is prime.

This paper considers $A_\infty$-algebras satisfying an analytic bound with respect to a fixed norm. We define a notion of right Calabi–Yau (CY) structures on such $A_\infty$-algebras and show that these give rise to cyclic minimal models satisfying the same analytic bound. This strengthens a theorem of Kontsevich and Soibelman [Stability structures, motivic Donaldson–Thomas invariants and cluster transformations, Preprint (2008), arXiv: 0811.2435], and yields a flexible method for obtaining the analytic potentials of Hua and Keller [Quivers with analytic potentials, Preprint (2019), arXiv: 1909.13517]. We apply these results to the endomorphism differential graded algebra (DGA) of polystable sheaves considered by Toda [Moduli stacks of semistable sheaves and representations of Ext-quivers, Geom. Topol. 22 (2018), 3083–3144], for which we construct a family of such right CY structures obtained from analytic germs of holomorphic volume forms. As a result, we find a canonical cyclic analytic $A_\infty$-structure on the Ext-algebra of a polystable sheaf, which depends only on the analytic-local geometry of its support. This yields an extension of Toda’s result [Geom. Topol. 22 (2018), 3083–3144] to the quasi-projective setting, and a new method for comparing cyclic $A_\infty$-structures of sheaves on different Calabi–Yau varieties.

The moduli space of bundle stable pairs $\overline {M}_C(2,\Lambda )$ on a smooth projective curve C, introduced by Thaddeus, is a smooth Fano variety of Picard rank two. Focusing on the genus two case, we show that its K-moduli space is isomorphic to a GIT moduli of lines in quartic del Pezzo threefolds. Additionally, we construct a natural forgetful morphism from the K-moduli of $\overline {M}_C(2,\Lambda )$ to that of the moduli spaces of stable vector bundles $\overline {N}_C(2,\Lambda )$. In particular, Thaddeus’ moduli spaces for genus two curves are all K-stable.

We determine the algebraic and transcendental lattices of a general cubic fourfold with a symplectic automorphism of prime order. We prove that cubic fourfolds admitting a symplectic automorphism of order at least three are rational, and we exhibit two families of rational cubic fourfolds that are not equivariantly rational with respect to their group of automorphisms. As an application, we determine the cohomological action of symplectic birational transformations of manifolds of OG10 type that are induced by prime order symplectic automorphisms of cubic fourfolds.

Under the assumption that the adjusted Brill-Noether number $\widetilde {\rho }$ is at least $-g$, we prove that the Brill-Noether loci in ${\mathcal M}_{g,n}$ of pointed curves carrying pencils with prescribed ramification at the marked points have a component of the expected codimension with pointed curves having Brill-Noether varieties of pencils of the minimal dimension. As an application, the map from the Hurwitz scheme to ${\mathcal M}_g$ is dominant if $n+\widetilde {\rho } \geq 0$ and generically finite otherwise, settling a variation of a classical problem of Zariski.

In the second part of the paper, we study the analogous loci of curves in Severi varieties on $K3$ surfaces, proving existence of curves with nongeneral behaviour from the point of view of Brill-Noether theory. This extends previous results of Ciliberto and the first-named author to the ramified case. We apply these results to study correspondences and cycles on $K3$ surfaces in relation to Beauville-Voisin points and constant cycle curves.

In this article, we classify irregular threefolds with numerically trivial canonical divisors in positive characteristic. For a threefold, if its Albanese dimension is not maximal, then the Albanese morphism will induce a fibration which either maps to a curve or is fibered by curves. In practice, we treat arbitrary dimensional irregular varieties with either one-dimensional Albanese fiber or one-dimensional Albanese image. We prove that such a variety carries another fibration transversal to its Albanese morphism (a “bi-fibration” structure), which is an analog structure of bielliptic or quasi-bielliptic surfaces. In turn, we give an explicit description of irregular threefolds with trivial canonical divisors.

We present an explicit geometric invariant theory construction which produces both the minimal resolution of the type $D_4$ surface singularity, and also the orbifold resolution. Our construction is based on a Tannakian approach which is in principle applicable to larger groups.

The compactification $\overline {\mathfrak M}_{1,3}$ of the Gieseker moduli space of surfaces of general type with $K_X^2 =1 $ and $\chi (X)=3$ in the moduli space of stable surfaces parametrises the so-called stable I-surfaces.

We classify all such surfaces which are 2-Gorenstein into four types using a mix of algebraic and geometric techniques. We find a new divisor in the closure of the Gieseker component and a new irreducible component of the moduli space.

We consider the countably many families $\mathcal {L}_d$, $d\in \mathbb {N}_{\geq 2}$, of K3 surfaces admitting an elliptic fibration with positive Mordell–Weil rank. We prove that the elliptic fibrations on the very general member of these families have the potential Mordell–Weil rank jump property for $d\neq 2,3$ and moreover the Mordell–Weil rank jump property for $d\equiv 3\ \mod 4$, $d\neq 3$. We provide explicit examples and discuss some extensions to subfamilies. The result is based on the geometric interaction between the (potential) Mordell–Weil rank jump property and the presence of special multisections of the fibration.

We show that a very general hypersurface of degree $d \geq 4$ and dimension $N \leq (d+1)2^{d-4}$ over a field of characteristic $\neq 2$ does not admit a decomposition of the diagonal; hence, it is neither stably nor retract rational, nor $\mathbb {A}^1$-connected. Similar results hold in characteristic $2$ under a slightly weaker degree bound. This improves earlier results in [44] and [33].

We show that each connected component of the moduli space of smooth real binary quintics is isomorphic to an open subset of an arithmetic quotient of the real hyperbolic plane. Moreover, our main result says that the induced metric on this moduli space extends to a complete real hyperbolic orbifold structure on the space of stable real binary quintics. This turns the moduli space of stable real binary quintics into the quotient of the real hyperbolic plane by an explicit non-arithmetic triangle group.

In this paper, we study the class of polytopes which can be obtained by taking the convex hull of some subset of the points $\{e_i-e_j \ \vert \ i \neq j\} \cup \{\pm e_i\}$ in $\mathbb {R}^n$, where $e_1,\dots ,e_n$ is the standard basis of $\mathbb {R}^n$. Such a polytope can be encoded by a quiver Q with vertices $V \subseteq \{{\upsilon }_1,\dots ,{\upsilon }_n\} \cup \{\star \}$, where each edge ${\upsilon }_j\to {\upsilon }_i$ or $\star \to {\upsilon }_i$ or ${\upsilon }_i\to \star $ gives rise to the point $e_i-e_j$ or $e_i$ or $-e_i$, respectively; we denote the corresponding polytope as $\operatorname {Root}(Q)$. These polytopes have been studied extensively under names such as edge polytope and root polytope. We show that if the quiver Q is strongly-connected, then the root polytope $\operatorname {Root}(Q)$ is reflexive and terminal; we moreover give a combinatorial description of the facets of $\operatorname {Root}(Q)$. We also show that if Q is planar, then $\operatorname {Root}(Q)$ is (integrally equivalent to) the polar dual of the flow polytope of the planar dual quiver $Q^{\vee }$. Finally, we consider the case that Q comes from the Hasse diagram of a finite ranked poset P and show in this case that $\operatorname {Root}(Q)$ is polar dual to (a translation of) a marked order polytope. We then go on to study the toric variety $Y(\mathcal {F}_Q)$ associated to the face fan $\mathcal {F}_Q$ of $\operatorname {Root}(Q)$. If Q comes from a ranked poset P, we give a combinatorial description of the Picard group of $Y(\mathcal {F}_Q)$, in terms of a new canonical ranked extension of P, and we show that $Y(\mathcal {F}_Q)$ is a small partial desingularisation of the Hibi projective toric variety $Y_{\mathcal {O}(P)}$ of the order polytope $\mathcal {O}(P)$. We show that $Y(\mathcal {F}_Q)$ has a small crepant toric resolution of singularities $Y(\widehat {\mathcal {F}}_Q)$ and, as a consequence that the Hibi toric variety $Y_{\mathcal {O}(P)}$ has a small resolution of singularities for any ranked poset P. These results have applications to mirror symmetry [61].

Let $\pi :X\rightarrow Z$ be a Fano type fibration with $\dim X-\dim Z=d$ and let $(X,B)$ be an $\epsilon $-lc pair with $K_X+B\sim _{\mathbb {R}} 0/Z$. The canonical bundle formula gives $(Z,B_Z+M_Z)$ where $B_Z$ is the discriminant divisor and $M_Z$ is the moduli divisor which is determined up to $\mathbb {R}$-linear equivalence. Shokurov conjectured that one can choose $M_Z\geqslant 0$ such that $(Z,B_Z+M_Z)$ is $\delta $-lc where $\delta $ only depends on $d,\epsilon $. Very recently, this conjecture was proved by Birkar [8]. For $d=1$ and $\epsilon =1$, Han, Jiang, and Luo [13] gave the optimal value of $\delta =1/2$. In this paper, we give the optimal value of $\delta $ for $d=1$ and arbitrary $0<\epsilon \leqslant 1$.

We construct pathological examples of MMP singularities in every positive characteristic using quotients by $\alpha _p$-actions. In particular, we obtain non-$S_3$ terminal singularities, as well as locally stable (respectively stable) families whose general fibers are smooth (respectively klt, Cohen–Macaulay, and F-injective) and whose special fibers are non-$S_2$. The dimensions of these examples are bounded below by a linear function of the characteristic.

Segre and Verlinde series have been studied in many cases, including virtual geometries of Quot schemes on surfaces and Calabi–Yau 4-folds. Our work is the first to address the equivariant setting for both ${\mathbb{C}}^2$ and ${\mathbb{C}}^4$ by examining higher degree contributions which have no compact analogue.

1. (i) For ${\mathbb{C}}^2$, we work mostly with virtual geometries of Quot schemes. After connecting the equivariant series in degree zero to the existing results of the first author for compact surfaces, we extend the Segre–Verlinde correspondence to all degrees and to the reduced virtual classes. Additionally, we conjecture that there is an equivariant symmetry of Segre series, which was also observed in the compact setting.

2. (ii) For ${\mathbb{C}}^4$, we give further motivation for the definition of the Verlinde series. Based on empirical data andtorsiopn additional structural results, we conjecture that there is an equivariant Segre–Verlinde correspondence and Segre symmetry analogous to the one for ${\mathbb{C}}^2$.

We prove that for every relatively prime pair of integers $(d,r)$ with $r>0$, there exists an exceptional pair $({\mathcal {O}},V)$ on any del Pezzo surface of degree $4$, such that V is a bundle of rank r and degree d. As an application, we prove that every Feigin-Odesskii Poisson bracket on a projective space can be included into a $5$-dimensional linear space of compatible Poisson brackets. We also construct new examples of linear spaces of compatible Feigin-Odesskii Poisson brackets of dimension $>5$, coming from del Pezzo surfaces of degree $>4$.

We prove that every irreducible component of the coarse Kollár-Shepherd-Barron and Alexeev (KSBA) moduli space of stable log Calabi–Yau surfaces admits a finite cover by a projective toric variety. This verifies a conjecture of Hacking–Keel–Yu. The proof combines tools from log smooth deformation theory, the minimal model program, punctured log Gromov–Witten theory, and mirror symmetry.