The Automorphism Group of Certain Factorial Threefolds and a Cancellation Problem

The automorphism groups of certain factorial complex affine threefolds admitting locally trivial actions of the additive group are determined. As a consequence new counterexamples to a generalized cancellation problem are obtained.Comment: To appear in Isr. J. Mat

Proper twin-triangular Ga-actions on A^4 are translations

An additive group action on an affine 3 -space over a complex Dedekind domain A is said to be twin-triangular if it is generated by a locally nilpotent derivation of A[y,z,t] of the form rd/dy+p(y)d/dz + q(y)d/dt, where r belongs to A and p,q belong to A[y] . We show that these actions are translations if and only if they are proper. Our approach avoids the computation of rings of invariants and focuses more on the nature of geometric quotients for such actions

On exotic affine 3-spheres

Every $\mathbb{A}^{1}-$bundle over the complex affine plane punctured at the origin, is trivial in the differentiable category but there are infinitely many distinct isomorphy classes of algebraic bundles. Isomorphy types of total spaces of such algebraic bundles are considered; in particular, the complex affine 3-sphere admitts such a structure with an additional homogeneity property. Total spaces of nontrivial homogeneous $\mathbb{A}^{1}$-bundles over the punctured plane are classified up to $\mathbb{G}_{m}$-equivariant algebraic isomorphism and a criterion for nonisomorphy is given. In fact the affine 3-sphere is not isomorphic as an abstract variety to the total space of any $\mathbb{A}^{1}$-bundle over the punctured plane of different homogeneous degree, which gives rise to the existence of exotic spheres, a phenomenon that first arises in dimension three. As a by product, an example is given of two biholomorphic but not algebraically isomorphic threefolds, both with a trivial Makar-Limanov invariant, and with isomorphic cylinders

Factorial threefolds with Ga-actions

The affine cancellation problem, which asks whether complex affine varieties with isomorphic cylinders are themselves isomorphic, has a positive solution for two dimensional varieties whose coordinate rings are unique factorization domains, in particular for the affine plane, but counterexamples are found within normal surfaces Danielewski surfaces and factorial threefolds of logarithmic Kodaira dimension equal to 1. The latter are therefore remote from the affine three-space, the first unknown case where the base of one cylinder is an affine space. Locally trivial Ga-actions play a significant role in these examples. Threefolds admitting free Ga-actions are discussed, especially a class of varieties with negative logarithmic Kodaira dimension which are total spaces of nonisomorphic Ga-bundles. Some members of the class are shown to be isomorphic as abstract varieties, but it is unknown whether any members of the class constitute counterexamples to cancellation

Unipotent group actions on affine varieties

Algebraic actions of unipotent groups $U$ actions on affine $k-$varieties $X$ ($k$ an algebraically closed field of characteristic 0) for which the algebraic quotient $X//U$ has small dimension are considered$.$ In case $X$ is factorial, $O(X)^{\ast}=k^{\ast},$ and $X//U$ is one-dimensional, it is shown that $O(X)^{U}$=$k[f]$, and if some point in $X$ has trivial isotropy, then $X$ is $U$ equivariantly isomorphic to $U\times A^{1}(k).$ The main results are given distinct geometric and algebraic proofs. Links to the Abhyankar-Sathaye conjecture and a new equivalent formulation of the Sathaye conjecture are made.Comment: 10 pages. This submission comes out of an older submission ("A commuting derivations theorem on UFDs") and contains part of i

Local Triviality of Proper Ga Actions

AbstractRegular actions of the additive group of complex numbers on complex surfaces and on complex affine space are considered. A proper action on an affine surface admits a geometric quotient which is an affine curve. A proper action on a normal quasiaffine surface is equivariantly trivial. New criteria for local and “global” triviality of proper actions on a complex affine space of arbitrary dimension are presented