Koszul algebras and regularity

This is a survey paper on commutative Koszul algebras and Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity. We describe several techniques to establish the Koszulness of algebras. We discuss variants of the Koszul property such as strongly Koszul, absolutely Koszul and universally Koszul. We present several open problems related with these notions and their local variants

Common transversals and tangents to two lines and two quadrics in P^3

We solve the following geometric problem, which arises in several three-dimensional applications in computational geometry: For which arrangements of two lines and two spheres in R^3 are there infinitely many lines simultaneously transversal to the two lines and tangent to the two spheres? We also treat a generalization of this problem to projective quadrics: Replacing the spheres in R^3 by quadrics in projective space P^3, and fixing the lines and one general quadric, we give the following complete geometric description of the set of (second) quadrics for which the 2 lines and 2 quadrics have infinitely many transversals and tangents: In the nine-dimensional projective space P^9 of quadrics, this is a curve of degree 24 consisting of 12 plane conics, a remarkably reducible variety.Comment: 26 pages, 9 .eps figures, web page with more pictures and and archive of computations: http://www.math.umass.edu/~sottile/pages/2l2s

Hilbert's fourteenth problem over finite fields, and a conjecture on the cone of curves

We give examples over arbitrary fields of rings of invariants that are not finitely generated. The group involved can be as small as three copies of the additive group, as in Mukai's examples over the complex numbers. The failure of finite generation comes from certain elliptic fibrations or abelian surface fibrations having positive Mordell-Weil rank. Our work suggests a generalization of the Morrison-Kawamata cone conjecture from Calabi-Yau varieties to klt Calabi-Yau pairs. We prove the conjecture in dimension 2 in the case of minimal rational elliptic surfaces.Comment: 26 pages. To appear in Compositio Mathematic

Signature Sequence of Intersection Curve of Two Quadrics for Exact Morphological Classification

We present an efficient method for classifying the morphology of the intersection curve of two quadrics (QSIC) in PR3, 3D real projective space; here, the term morphology is used in a broad sense to mean the shape, topological, and algebraic properties of a QSIC, including singularity, reducibility, the number of connected components, and the degree of each irreducible component, etc. There are in total 35 different QSIC morphologies with non-degenerate quadric pencils. For each of these 35 QSIC morphologies, through a detailed study of the eigenvalue curve and the index function jump we establish a characterizing algebraic condition expressed in terms of the Segre characteristics and the signature sequence of a quadric pencil. We show how to compute a signature sequence with rational arithmetic so as to determine the morphology of the intersection curve of any two given quadrics. Two immediate applications of our results are the robust topological classification of QSIC in computing B-rep surface representation in solid modeling and the derivation of algebraic conditions for collision detection of quadric primitives

Real k-flats tangent to quadrics in R^n

Let d_{k,n} and #_{k,n} denote the dimension and the degree of the Grassmannian G_{k,n} of k-planes in projective n-space, respectively. For each k between 1 and n-2 there are 2^{d_{k,n}} \cdot #_{k,n} (a priori complex) k-planes in P^n tangent to d_{k,n} general quadratic hypersurfaces in P^n. We show that this class of enumerative problem is fully real, i.e., for each k between 1 and n-2 there exists a configuration of d_{k,n} real quadrics in (affine) real space R^n so that all the mutually tangent k-flats are real.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. Minor revisions, to appear in Proc. AM

Computing the Chow variety of quadratic space curves

Quadrics in the Grassmannian of lines in 3-space form a 19-dimensional projective space. We study the subvariety of coisotropic hypersurfaces. Following Gel'fand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky, it decomposes into Chow forms of plane conics, Chow forms of pairs of lines, and Hurwitz forms of quadric surfaces. We compute the ideals of these loci