Computing the characteristic numbers of the variety of nodal plane cubics in P3

AbstractIn this note we obtain, phrased in present day geometric and computational frameworks, the characteristic numbers of the family Unod of non-degenerate nodal plane cubics in P3, first obtained by Schubert in his Kalkül der abzählenden Geometrie. The main geometric contribution is a detailed study of a variety Xnod, which is a compactification of the family Unod, including the boundary components (degenerations) and a generalization to P3 of a formula of Zeuthen for nodal cubics in P2. The computations have been carried out with the Wiris boost WIT

Equivariant Degenerations of Plane Curve Orbits

In a series of papers, Aluffi and Faber computed the degree of the $GL_3$ orbit closure of an arbitrary plane curve. We attempt to generalize this to the equivariant setting by studying how orbits degenerate under some natural specializations, yielding a fairly complete picture in the case of plane quartics.Comment: 33 pages, comments welcom

Calabi–Yau threefolds and moduli of abelian surfaces I

We describe birational models and decide the rationality/unirationality of moduli spaces $\cal A$d (and $\cal A$levd) of (1, d)-polarized Abelian surfaces (with canonical level structure, respectively) for small values of d. The projective lines identified in the rational/unirational moduli spaces correspond to pencils of Abelian surfaces traced on nodal threefolds living naturally in the corresponding ambient projective spaces, and whose small resolutions are new Calabi–Yau threefolds with Euler characteristic zero

Asymptotically cylindrical Calabi-Yau 3-folds from weak Fano 3-folds

We prove the existence of asymptotically cylindrical (ACyl) Calabi-Yau 3-folds starting with (almost) any deformation family of smooth weak Fano 3-folds. This allow us to exhibit hundreds of thousands of new ACyl Calabi-Yau 3-folds; previously only a few hundred ACyl Calabi-Yau 3-folds were known. We pay particular attention to a subclass of weak Fano 3-folds that we call semi-Fano 3-folds. Semi-Fano 3-folds satisfy stronger cohomology vanishing theorems and enjoy certain topological properties not satisfied by general weak Fano 3-folds, but are far more numerous than genuine Fano 3-folds. Also, unlike Fanos they often contain P^1s with normal bundle O(-1) + O(-1), giving rise to compact rigid holomorphic curves in the associated ACyl Calabi-Yau 3-folds. We introduce some general methods to compute the basic topological invariants of ACyl Calabi-Yau 3-folds constructed from semi-Fano 3-folds, and study a small number of representative examples in detail. Similar methods allow the computation of the topology in many other examples. All the features of the ACyl Calabi-Yau 3-folds studied here find application in arXiv:1207.4470 where we construct many new compact G_2-manifolds using Kovalev's twisted connected sum construction. ACyl Calabi-Yau 3-folds constructed from semi-Fano 3-folds are particularly well-adapted for this purpose.Comment: 107 pages, 1 figure. v3: minor corrections, changed formattin