Quotients of Hypersurfaces in Weighted Projective Space

In [1] some quotients of one-parameter families of Calabi-Yau va- rieties are related to the family of Mirror Quintics by using a construction due to Shioda. In this paper, we generalize this construction to a wider class of varieties. More specifically, let A be an invertible matrix with non-negative integer entries. We introduce varieties XA and MA in weighted projective space and in Pn, respectively. The variety MA turns out to be a quotient of a Fermat variety by a finite group. As a by-product, XA is a quotient of a Fermat variety and MA is a quotient of XA by a finite group. We apply this construction to some families of Calabi-Yau manifolds in order to show their birationality

The tautological ring of spin moduli spaces

We introduce the notion of tautological ring for the moduli space of spin curves. Moreover, we study some relations among tautological classes which are motivated by physics. Finally, we show that the Chow rings of these moduli spaces are tautological in low genus

Euler characteristics of moduli spaces of curves

Let Mgn be the moduli space of n-pointed Riemann surfaces of genus g. Denote by Mgn the Deligne-Mumford compactification of Mgn. In the present paper, we calculate the orbifold and the ordinary Euler characteristic of Mgn for any g and n such that n > 2-2g

Quotients of the Dwork pencil

In this paper we investigate the geometry of the Dwork pencil in any dimension. More specifically, we study the automorphism group G of the generic fiber of the pencil over the complex projective line, and the quotients of it by various subgroups of G. In particular, we compute the Hodge numbers of these quotients via orbifold cohomology

Geometry and arithmetic of Maschke's Calabi-Yau three-fold

Maschke's Calabi-Yau three-fold is the double cover of projective three space branched along Maschke's octic surface. This surface is defined by the lowest degree invariant of a certain finite group acting on a four-dimensional (4D) vector space. Using this group, we show that the middle Betti cohomology group of the three-fold decomposes into the direct sum of 150 2D Hodge substructures. We exhibit 1D families of rational curves on the three-fold and verify that the associated Abel-Jacobi map is non-trivial. By counting the number of points over finite fields, we determine the rank of the Neron-Severi group of Maschke's surface and the Galois representation on the transcendental lattice of some of its quotients. We also formulate precise conjectures on the modularity of the Galois representations associated to Maschke's three-fold (these have now been proven by M. Schutt) and to a genus 33 curve, which parametrizes rational curves in the three-fold

Geometric transport along circular orbits in stationary axisymmetric spacetimes

Parallel transport along circular orbits in orthogonally transitive stationary axisymmetric spacetimes is described explicitly relative to Lie transport in terms of the electric and magnetic parts of the induced connection. The influence of both the gravitoelectromagnetic fields associated with the zero angular momentum observers and of the Frenet-Serret parameters of these orbits as a function of their angular velocity is seen on the behavior of parallel transport through its representation as a parameter-dependent Lorentz transformation between these two inner-product preserving transports which is generated by the induced connection. This extends the analysis of parallel transport in the equatorial plane of the Kerr spacetime to the entire spacetime outside the black hole horizon, and helps give an intuitive picture of how competing "central attraction forces" and centripetal accelerations contribute with gravitomagnetic effects to explain the behavior of the 4-acceleration of circular orbits in that spacetime.Comment: 33 pages ijmpd latex article with 24 eps figure

Spinning test particles and clock effect in Schwarzschild spacetime

We study the behaviour of spinning test particles in the Schwarzschild spacetime. Using Mathisson-Papapetrou equations of motion we confine our attention to spatially circular orbits and search for observable effects which could eventually discriminate among the standard supplementary conditions namely the Corinaldesi-Papapetrou, Pirani and Tulczyjew. We find that if the world line chosen for the multipole reduction and whose unit tangent we denote as $U$ is a circular orbit then also the generalized momentum $P$ of the spinning test particle is tangent to a circular orbit even though $P$ and $U$ are not parallel four-vectors. These orbits are shown to exist because the spin induced tidal forces provide the required acceleration no matter what supplementary condition we select. Of course, in the limit of a small spin the particle's orbit is close of being a circular geodesic and the (small) deviation of the angular velocities from the geodesic values can be of an arbitrary sign, corresponding to the possible spin-up and spin-down alignment to the z-axis. When two spinning particles orbit around a gravitating source in opposite directions, they make one loop with respect to a given static observer with different arrival times. This difference is termed clock effect. We find that a nonzero gravitomagnetic clock effect appears for oppositely orbiting both spin-up or spin-down particles even in the Schwarzschild spacetime. This allows us to establish a formal analogy with the case of (spin-less) geodesics on the equatorial plane of the Kerr spacetime. This result can be verified experimentally.Comment: IOP macros, eps figures n. 2, to appear on Classical and Quantum gravity, 200

Some Remarks on Calabi-Yau Manifolds

Here we focus on the geometry of the “mirror quintic” Y and its generalizations. In particular, we illustrate how to obtain new birational models of Y . The article under review can be regarded as an announcement of or supplement to results in forthcoming papers of the author and his collaborators concerning quintic threefolds, the Dwork pencil, and its natural generalization to higher dimensions [G. Bini, “Quotients of hypersurfaces in weighted projective space”, preprint, arxiv.org/ abs/0905.2099, Adv. Geom., to appear; G. Bini, B. van Geemen and T. L. Kelly, “Mirror quintics, discrete symmetries and Shioda maps”, preprint, arxiv.org/abs/0809. 1791, J. Algebraic Geom., to appear; G. Bini and A. Garbagnati, “The geometry of the generalized Dwork pencil and its quotients”, in preparation]