Fibrations in complete intersections of quadrics, Clifford algebras, derived categories, and rationality problems

Let X -> Y be a fibration whose fibers are complete intersections of two quadrics. We develop new categorical and algebraic tools---a theory of relative homological projective duality and the Morita invariance of the even Clifford algebra under quadric reduction by hyperbolic splitting---to study semiorthogonal decompositions of the bounded derived category of X. Together with new results in the theory of quadratic forms, we apply these tools in the case where X -> Y has relative dimension 1, 2, or 3, in which case the fibers are curves of genus 1, Del Pezzo surfaces of degree 4, or Fano threefolds, respectively. In the latter two cases, if Y is the projective line over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, we relate rationality questions to categorical representability of X.Comment: 43 pages, changes made and some material added and corrected in sections 1, 4, and 5; this is the final version accepted for publication at Journal de Math\'ematiques Pures et Appliqu\'ee

Primitive contractions of Calabi-Yau threefolds II

We construct 16 new examples of Calabi--Yau threefolds with Picard group of rank 1. Each of these examples is obtained by smoothing the image of a primitive contraction with exceptional divisor being a del Pezzo surface of degree 6, 7 or $\mathbb{P}^1\times \mathbb{P}^1$.Comment: 20 pages, to appear in JLM

Projective geometry of Wachspress coordinates

We show that there is a unique hypersurface of minimal degree passing through the non-faces of a polytope which is defined by a simple hyperplane arrangement. This generalizes the construction of the adjoint curve of a polygon by Wachspress in 1975. The defining polynomial of our adjoint hypersurface is the adjoint polynomial introduced by Warren in 1996. This is a key ingredient for the definition of Wachspress coordinates, which are barycentric coordinates on an arbitrary convex polytope. The adjoint polynomial also appears both in algebraic statistics, when studying the moments of uniform probability distributions on polytopes, and in intersection theory, when computing Segre classes of monomial schemes. We describe the Wachspress map, the rational map defined by the Wachspress coordinates, and the Wachspress variety, the image of this map. The inverse of the Wachspress map is the projection from the linear span of the image of the adjoint hypersurface. To relate adjoints of polytopes to classical adjoints of divisors in algebraic geometry, we study irreducible hypersurfaces that have the same degree and multiplicity along the non-faces of a polytope as its defining hyperplane arrangement. We list all finitely many combinatorial types of polytopes in dimensions two and three for which such irreducible hypersurfaces exist. In the case of polygons, the general such curves< are elliptic. In the three-dimensional case, the general such surfaces are either K3 or elliptic

Complete intersections: Moduli, Torelli, and good reduction

We study the arithmetic of complete intersections in projective space over number fields. Our main results include arithmetic Torelli theorems and versions of the Shafarevich conjecture, as proved for curves and abelian varieties by Faltings. For example, we prove an analogue of the Shafarevich conjecture for cubic and quartic threefolds and intersections of two quadrics.Comment: 37 pages. Typo's fixed. Expanded Section 2.

Projections of del Pezzo surfaces and Calabi--Yau threefolds

We study the syzygetic structure of projections of del Pezzo surfaces in order to construct singular Calabi-Yau threefolds. By smoothing those threefolds, we obtain new examples of Calabi-Yau threefolds with Picard group of rank 1. We also give an example of type II primitive contraction whose exceptional divisor is the blow-up of the projective plane at a point.Comment: A table of known Calabi--Yau threefolds with Picard number 1 is added, to appear in Advances in Geometr

Examples of cylindrical Fano fourfolds

We construct 4 di erent families of smooth Fano fourfolds with Picard rank 1, which contain cylinders, i.e., Zariski open subsets of the form Z x A1, where Z is a quasiprojective variety. The affi ne cones over such a fourfold admit eff ective Ga-actions. Similar constructions of cylindrical Fano threefolds were done previously in our papers jointly with Takashi Kishimoto.Comment: 23