Calabi-Yau quotients with terminal singularities

In this paper we are interested in quotients of Calabi-Yau threefolds with isolated singularities. In particular, we analyze the case when $X/G$ has terminal singularities. We prove that, if $G$ is cyclic of prime order and $X/G$ has terminal singularities, then $G$ has order $2,3$ or $5$.Comment: 15 pages, no figures. Current version has some changes in the structure of the article, some corrected typos and an up-to-date bibliograph

Covering of elliptic curves and the kernel of the Prym map

Motivated by a conjecture of Xiao, we study families of coverings of elliptic curves and their corresponding Prym map $\Phi$. More precisely, we describe the codifferential of the period map $P$ associated to $\Phi$ in terms of the residue of meromorphic $1$-forms and then we use it to give a characterization for the coverings for which the dimension of $\ker(dP)$ is the least possibile. This is useful in order to exclude the existence of non isotrivial fibrations with maximal relative irregularity and thus also in order to give counterexamples to the Xiao's conjecture mentioned above. The first counterexample to the original conjecture, due to Pirola, is then analysed in our framework.Comment: 21 pages, no figures. The seminal ideas at the base of this article were born in the framework of the PRAGMATIC project of year 201

Underwater laboratory: Teaching physics through diving practice

Diving education and diving science and technology may be a useful tool in teaching physics in non–physics-oriented High School courses. In this paper we present an activity which combines some simple theoretical aspects of fluid statics, fluid dynamics and gas behavior under pressure with diving experience, where the swimming pool and the sea are used as a laboratory. This topic had previously been approached in a pure experimental way in school laboratory, but some particular experiments became much more attractive and meaningful to the students when they could use their bodies to perform them directly in water. The activity was carried out with groups of students from Italian High School classes in different situations

Improved particle charging technique final report

High current ion beam for improving particle charging - hypervelocity accelerato

New examples of Calabi-Yau threefolds and genus zero surfaces

We classify the subgroups of the automorphism group of the product of 4 projective lines admitting an invariant anticanonical smooth divisor on which the action is free. As a first application, we describe new examples of Calabi-Yau 3-folds with small Hodge numbers. In particular, the Picard number is 1 and the number of moduli is 5. Furthermore, the fundamental group is non-trivial. We also construct a new family of minimal surfaces of general type with geometric genus zero, K^2=3 and fundamental group of order 16. We show that this family dominates an irreducible component of dimension 4 of the moduli space of the surfaces of general type.Comment: 18 pages; v2: simplified some arguments in the last section, final version to appear on Communications in Contemporary Mathematic

Lefschetz properties for jacobian rings of cubic fourfolds and other Artinian algebras

In this paper, we exploit some geometric-differential techniques to prove the strong Lefschetz property in degree $1$ for a complete intersection standard Artinian Gorenstein algebra of codimension $6$ presented by quadrics. We prove also some strong Lefschetz properties for the same kind of Artinian algebras in higher codimensions. Moreover, we analyze some loci that come naturally into the picture of "special" Artinian algebras: for them, we give some geometric descriptions and show a connection between the non emptiness of the so-called non-Lefschetz locus in degree $1$ and the "lifting" of a weak Lefschetz property to an algebra from one of its quotients.Comment: 21 page