A very special EPW sextic and two IHS fourfolds

We show that the Hilbert scheme of two points on the Vinberg $K3$ surface has a 2:1 map onto a very symmetric EPW sextic $Y$ in $\mathbb{P}^5$. The fourfold $Y$ is singular along $60$ planes, $20$ of which form a complete family of incident planes. This solves a problem of Morin and O'Grady and establishes that $20$ is the maximal cardinality of such a family of planes. Next, we show that this Hilbert scheme is birationally isomorphic to the Kummer type IHS fourfold $X_0$ constructed in [DW]. We find that $X_0$ is also related to the Debarre-Varley abelian fourfold.Comment: 32 page

Arcs on Punctured Disks Intersecting at Most Twice with Endpoints on the Boundary

Let $D_n$ be the $n$-punctured disk. We prove that a family of essential simple arcs starting and ending at the boundary and pairwise intersecting at most twice is of size at most $\binom{n+1}{3}$. On the way, we also show that any nontrivial square complex homeomorphic to a disk whose hyperplanes are simple arcs intersecting at most twice must have a corner or a spur.Comment: Assaf Bar-Natan's MSc thesis, written under the supervision of Prof. Piotr Przytyck

Compactifications defined by arrangements II: locally symmetric varieties of type IV

We define a new class of completions of locally symmetric varieties of type IV which interpolates between the Baily-Borel compactification and Mumford's toric compactifications. An arithmetic arrangement in a locally symmetric variety of type IV determines such a completion canonically. This completion admits a natural contraction that leaves the complement of the arrangement untouched. The resulting completion of the arrangement complement is very much like a Baily-Borel compactification: it is the proj of an algebra of meromorphic automorphic forms. When that complement has a moduli space interpretation, then what we get is often a compactification obtained by means of geometric invariant theory. We illustrate this with several examples: moduli spaces of polarized $K3$ and Enriques surfaces and the semi-universal deformation of a triangle singularity. We also discuss the question when a type IV arrangement is definable by an automorphic form.Comment: The section on arrangements on tube domains has beeen expanded in order to make a connection with a conjecture of Gritsenko and Nikulin. Also added: a list of notation and some references. Finally some typo's corrected and a few minor changes made in notatio

Hyperelliptic Jacobians as Billiard Algebra of Pencils of Quadrics: Beyond Poncelet Porisms

The thirty years old programme of Griffiths and Harris of understanding higher-dimensional analogues of Poncelet-type problems and synthetic approach to higher genera addition theorems has been settled and completed in this paper. Starting with the observation of the billiard nature of some classical constructions and configurations, we construct the billiard algebra, that is a group structure on the set T of lines in $R^d$ simultaneously tangent to d-1 quadrics from a given confocal family. Using this tool, the related results of Reid, Donagi and Knoerrer are further developed, realized and simplified. We derive a fundamental property of T: any two lines from this set can be obtained from each other by at most d-1 billiard reflections at some quadrics from the confocal family. We introduce two hierarchies of notions: s-skew lines in T and s-weak Poncelet trajectories, s = -1,0,...,d-2. The interrelations between billiard dynamics, linear subspaces of intersections of quadrics and hyperelliptic Jacobians developed in this paper enabled us to obtain higher-dimensional and higher-genera generalizations of several classical genus 1 results: the Cayley's theorem, the Weyr's theorem, the Griffiths-Harris theorem and the Darboux theorem.Comment: 36 pages, 11 figures; to be published in Advances in Mathematic

Darboux cyclides and webs from circles

Motivated by potential applications in architecture, we study Darboux cyclides. These algebraic surfaces of order a most 4 are a superset of Dupin cyclides and quadrics, and they carry up to six real families of circles. Revisiting the classical approach to these surfaces based on the spherical model of 3D Moebius geometry, we provide computational tools for the identification of circle families on a given cyclide and for the direct design of those. In particular, we show that certain triples of circle families may be arranged as so-called hexagonal webs, and we provide a complete classification of all possible hexagonal webs of circles on Darboux cyclides.Comment: 34 pages, 20 figure

Homaloidal hypersurfaces and hypersurfaces with vanishing Hessian

We prove the existence of various families of irreducible homaloidal hypersurfaces in projective space $\mathbb P^ r$, for all $r\geq 3$. Some of these are families of homaloidal hypersurfaces whose degrees are arbitrarily large as compared to the dimension of the ambient projective space. The existence of such a family solves a question that has naturally arisen from the consideration of the classes of homaloidal hypersurfaces known so far. The result relies on a fine analysis of dual hypersurfaces to certain scroll surfaces. We also introduce an infinite family of determinantal homaloidal hypersurfaces based on a certain degeneration of a generic Hankel matrix. These examples fit non--classical versions of de Jonqui\`eres transformations. As a natural counterpoint, we broaden up aspects of the theory of Gordan--Noether hypersurfaces with vanishing Hessian determinant, bringing over some more precision to the present knowledge.Comment: 56 pages. Some material added in section 1; minor changes. Final version to appear in Advances in Mathematic

The Brauer-Manin Obstruction and Sha[2].

We discuss the Brauer-Manin obstruction on del Pezzo surfaces of degree 4. We outline a detailed algorithm for computing the obstruction and provide associated programs in magma. This is illustrated with the computation of an example with an irreducible cubic factor in the singular locus of the defining pencil of quadrics (in contrast to previous examples, which had at worst quadratic irreducible factors). We exploit the relationship with the Tate-Shafarevich group to give new types of examples of Sha[2], for families of curves of genus 2 of the form y^2 = f(x), where f(x) is a quintic containing an irreducible cubic factor