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

Discrete conformal maps and ideal hyperbolic polyhedra

We establish a connection between two previously unrelated topics: a particular discrete version of conformal geometry for triangulated surfaces, and the geometry of ideal polyhedra in hyperbolic three-space. Two triangulated surfaces are considered discretely conformally equivalent if the edge lengths are related by scale factors associated with the vertices. This simple definition leads to a surprisingly rich theory featuring M\"obius invariance, the definition of discrete conformal maps as circumcircle preserving piecewise projective maps, and two variational principles. We show how literally the same theory can be reinterpreted to addresses the problem of constructing an ideal hyperbolic polyhedron with prescribed intrinsic metric. This synthesis enables us to derive a companion theory of discrete conformal maps for hyperbolic triangulations. It also shows how the definitions of discrete conformality considered here are closely related to the established definition of discrete conformality in terms of circle packings.Comment: 62 pages, 22 figures. v2: typos corrected, references added and updated, minor changes in exposition. v3, final version: typos corrected, improved exposition, some material moved to appendice

Configurations of infinitely near points

We present a survey of some aspects and new results on configurations, i.e. disjoint unions of constellations of infinitely near points, local and global theory, with some applications and results on generalized Enriques diagrams, singular foliations, and linear systems defined by clusters