For an arbitrary connected reductive group $G$, we consider the motivic integral over the arc space of an arbitrary $ \mathbb{Q} $-Gorenstein horospherical $G$-variety ${X}_{\Sigma } $ associated with a colored fan $\Sigma $ and prove a formula for the stringy $E$-function of ${X}_{\Sigma } $ which generalizes the one for toric varieties. We remark that, in contrast to toric varieties, the stringy $E$-function of a Gorenstein horospherical variety ${X}_{\Sigma } $ may be not a polynomial if some cones in $\Sigma $ have nonempty sets of colors. Using the stringy $E$-function, we can formulate and prove a new smoothness criterion for locally factorial horospherical varieties. We expect that this smoothness criterion holds for arbitrary spherical varieties.

We show how the techniques of Voevodsky’s proof of the Milnor conjecture and the Voevodsky–Rost proof of its generalization the Bloch–Kato conjecture can be used to study counterexamples to the classical Lüroth problem. By generalizing a method due to Peyre, we produce for any prime number $\ell $ and any integer $n\geq 2$, a rationally connected, non-rational variety for which non-rationality is detected by a non-trivial degree $n$ unramified étale cohomology class with $\ell $-torsion coefficients. When $\ell = 2$, the varieties that are constructed are furthermore unirational and non-rationality cannot be detected by a torsion unramified étale cohomology class of lower degree.

We prove that the space of smooth rational curves of degree $e$ on a general complete intersection of multidegree $(d_1, \ldots , d_m)$ in $\mathbb {P}^n$ is irreducible of the expected dimension if $\sum _{i=1}^m d_i \lt (2n+m+1)/3$ and $n$ is sufficiently large. This generalizes a result of Harris, Roth and Starr [Rational curves on hypersurfaces of low degree, J. Reine Angew. Math. 571 (2004), 73–106], and is achieved by proving that the space of conics passing through any point of a general complete intersection has constant dimension if $\sum _{i=1}^m d_i$ is small compared to $n$.

We exhibit seven linear codes exceeding the current best known minimum distance $d$ for their dimension $k$ and block length $n$ . Each code is defined over ${ \mathbb{F} }_{8} $ , and their invariants $[n, k, d] $ are given by $[49, 13, 27] $ , $[49, 14, 26] $ , $[49, 16, 24] $ , $[49, 17, 23] $ , $[49, 19, 21] $ , $[49, 25, 16] $ and $[49, 26, 15] $ . Our method includes an exhaustive search of all monomial evaluation codes generated by points in the $[0, 5] \times [0, 5] $ lattice square.

In [Gorodnik and Nevo, Counting lattice points, J. Reine Angew. Math. 663 (2012), 127–176] an effective solution of the lattice point counting problem in general domains in semisimple S-algebraic groups and affine symmetric varieties was established. The method relies on the mean ergodic theorem for the action of G on G/Γ, and implies uniformity in counting over families of lattice subgroups admitting a uniform spectral gap. In the present paper we extend some methods developed in [Nevo and Sarnak, Prime and almost prime integral points on principal homogeneous spaces, Acta Math. 205 (2010), 361–402] and use them to establish several useful consequences of this property, including:

1. (1) effective upper bounds on lifting for solutions of congruences in affine homogeneous varieties;

2. (2) effective upper bounds on the number of integral points on general subvarieties of semisimple group varieties;

3. (3) effective lower bounds on the number of almost prime points on symmetric varieties;

4. (4) effective upper bounds on almost prime solutions of congruences in homogeneous varieties.

We give bounds for the Betti numbers of projective algebraic varieties in terms of their classes (degrees of dual varieties of successive hyperplane sections). We also give bounds for classes in terms of ramification volumes (mixed ramification degrees), sectional genus and, eventually, in terms of dimension, codimension and degree. For varieties whose degree is large with respect to codimension, we give sharp bounds for the above invariants and classify the varieties on the boundary, thus obtaining a generalization of Castelnuovo’s theory for curves to varieties of higher dimension.

We introduce the idea of a geometric categorical Lie algebra action on derived categories of coherent sheaves. The main result is that such an action induces an action of the braid group associated to the Lie algebra. The same proof shows that strong categorical actions in the sense of Khovanov–Lauda and Rouquier also lead to braid group actions. As an example, we construct an action of Artin’s braid group on derived categories of coherent sheaves on cotangent bundles to partial flag varieties.

In this article we consider exceptional sequences of invertible sheaves on smooth complete rational surfaces. We show that to every such sequence one can associate a smooth complete toric surface in a canonical way. We use this structural result to prove various theorems on exceptional and strongly exceptional sequences of invertible sheaves on rational surfaces. We construct full strongly exceptional sequences for a large class of rational surfaces. For the case of toric surfaces we give a complete classification of full strongly exceptional sequences of invertible sheaves.

The holonomic rank of the A-hypergeometric system MA(β) is the degree of the toric ideal IA for generic parameters; in general, this is only a lower bound. To the semigroup ring of A we attach the ranking arrangement and use this algebraic invariant and the exceptional arrangement of non-generic parameters to construct a combinatorial formula for the rank jump of MA(β). As consequences, we obtain a refinement of the stratification of the exceptional arrangement by the rank of MA(β) and show that the Zariski closure of each of its strata is a union of translates of linear subspaces of the parameter space. These results hold for generalized A-hypergeometric systems as well, where the semigroup ring of A is replaced by a non-trivial weakly toric module M⊆ℂ[ℤA] . We also provide a direct proof of the main result in [M. Saito, Isomorphism classes of A-hypergeometric systems, Compositio Math. 128 (2001), 323–338] regarding the isomorphism classes of MA (β) .

Gel’fand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky proved, using the theory of perverse sheaves, that in the Cohen–Macaulay case an A-hypergeometric system is irreducible if its parameter vector is non-resonant. In this paper we prove, using the theory of the ring of differential operators on an affine toric variety, that in general an A-hypergeometric system is irreducible if and only if its parameter vector is non-resonant. In the course of the proof, we determine the irreducible quotients of an A-hypergeometric system.

Toric log del Pezzo surfaces correspond to convex lattice polygons containing the origin in their interior and having only primitive vertices. Upper bounds on the volume and on the number of boundary lattice points of these polygons are derived in terms of the index ℓ. Techniques for classifying these polygons are also described: a direct classification for index two is given, and a classification for all ℓ≤16 is obtained.

We study the asymptotical behaviour of the moduli space of morphisms of given anticanonical degree from a rational curve to a split toric variety, when the degree goes to infinity. We obtain in this case a geometric analogue of Manin’s conjecture about rational points of bounded height on varieties defined over a global field. The study is led through a generating series whose coefficients lie in a Grothendieck ring of motives, the motivic height zeta function. In order to establish convergence properties of this function, we use a notion of motivic Euler product. It relies on a construction of Denef and Loeser which associates a virtual motive to a first order logic ring formula.

Viro method plays an important role in the study of topology of real algebraic hypersurfaces. The T-primitive hypersurfaces we study here appear as the result of Viro's combinatorial patchworking when one starts with a primitive triangulation. We show that the Euler characteristic of the real part of such a hypersurface of even dimension is equal to the signature of its complex part. We explain how this can be understood in tropical geometry. We use this result to prove the existence of maximal surfaces in some three-dimensional toric varieties, namely those corresponding to Nakajima polytopes.

For a fixed parabolic subalgebra 𝔭 of we prove that the centre of the principal block 𝒪0𝔭 of the parabolic category 𝒪 is naturally isomorphic to the cohomology ring H*(ℬ𝔭) of the corresponding Springer fibre. We give a diagrammatic description of 𝒪0𝔭 for maximal parabolic 𝔭 and give an explicit isomorphism to Braden’s description of the category PervB(G(k,n)) of Schubert-constructible perverse sheaves on Grassmannians. As a consequence Khovanov’s algebra ℋn is realised as the endomorphism ring of some object from PervB(G(n,n)) which corresponds under localisation and the Riemann–Hilbert correspondence to a full projective–injective module in the corresponding category 𝒪0𝔭. From there one can deduce that Khovanov’s tangle invariants are obtained from the more general functorial invariants in [C. Stroppel, Categorification of the Temperley Lieb category, tangles, and cobordisms via projective functors, Duke Math. J. 126(3) (2005), 547–596] by restriction.

In this paper, we show that there is an equivalence between the 2-category of smooth Deligne–Mumford stacks with torus embeddings and actions and the 1-category of stacky fans. To this end, we prove two main results. The first is related to a combinatorial aspect of the 2-category of toric algebraic stacks defined by I. Iwanari [Logarithmic geometry, minimal free resolutions and toric algebraic stacks, Preprint (2007)]; we establish an equivalence between the 2-category of toric algebraic stacks and the 1-category of stacky fans. The second result provides a geometric characterization of toric algebraic stacks. Logarithmic geometry in the sense of Fontaine–Illusie plays a central role in obtaining our results.

We study the stability map from the rigid analytic space of semistable points in P3 to convex sets in the building of Sp2 over a local field and construct a pure affinoid covering of the space of stable points.

Here we study the dimension δ(m, X) of the general fibers of the m-Gaussian map of a singular n-dimensional variety X ⊂ Pn. We show that for all integers a, b, c, d with n ≦ a < b ≦ c < d ≦ N − 1 and a + d = b + c we have δ (a, X) + δ(d, X) > δ(b, X) + δ(c, X). If δ(X, N − 1) is very large we give some classification results which extend to the singular case some results of Ein.

Let G be a unitary group of rank one over a non-archimedean local field K (whose residue field has a characteristic ≠ 2). We consider the action of G on the projective plane. A G(K) equivariant map from the set of points in the projective plane that are semistable for every maximal K split torus in G to the set of convex subsets of the building of G(K) is constructed. This map gives rise to an equivariant map from the set of points that are stable for every maximal K split torus to the building. Using these maps one describes a G(K) invariant pure affinoid covering of the set of stable points. The reduction of the affinoid covering is given.

We continue our study of the reduction of PEL Shimura varieties with parahoric level structure at primes p at which the group defining the Shimura variety ramifies. We describe ‘good’ p-adic integral models of these Shimura varieties and study their étale local structure. In the present paper we mainly concentrate on the case of unitary groups for a ramified quadratic extension. Some of our results are applications of the theory of twisted affine flag varieties that we developed in a previous paper.