Open loci of ideals with applications to Birational maps

In this work we show that the loci of ideals in principal class, ideals of grade at least two, and ideals of maximal analytic spread are Zariski open sets in the parameter space. As an application, we show that the set of birational maps of {\it clear polynomial degree} $d$ over an arbitrary projective variety $X$, denoted by \Bir(X)_{d}, is a constructible set. This extends a previous result by Blanc and Furter.Comment: 19 pg

Hankel determinantal rings have rational singularities

Hankel determinantal rings, i.e., determinantal rings defined by minors of Hankel matrices of indeterminates, arise as homogeneous coordinate rings of higher order secant varieties of rational normal curves; they may also be viewed as linear specializations of generic determinantal rings. We prove that, over fields of characteristic zero, Hankel determinantal rings have rational singularities; in the case of positive prime characteristic, we prove that they are F-pure. Independent of the characteristic, we give a complete description of the divisor class groups of these rings, and show that each divisor class group element is the class of a maximal Cohen-Macaulay modul