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Back to Algebraic Geometry Seminar: Spring 2016

Algebraic Geometry Seminar


Date: Tuesday, Feb 2, 2016

Time: 3:30PM - 4:30PM

Location: JFB 102

2:50 - 3:50PM JFB 102


Burt Totaro

University of California, Los Angelos

Title

Hypersurfaces that are not stably rational

Abstract

We show that a large class of complex hypersurfaces in all dimensions are not stably rational. (A variety is stably rational if its product with some projective space is birational to projective space.) Namely, for all d at least about 2n/3, a very general hypersurface of degree d in P^{n+1} is not stably rational. The result covers all the degrees in which Kollar proved that a very general hypersurface is not rational, and a bit more. For example, very general quartic 4-folds are not stably rational, whereas it was not even known whether these varieties are rational.

Algebraic Geometry

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