On the birational geometry of spaces of complete forms II: skew-forms

Moduli spaces of complete skew-forms are compactifications of spaces of skew-symmetric linear maps of maximal rank on a fixed vector space, where the added boundary divisor is simple normal crossing. In this paper we compute their effective, nef and movable cones, the generators of their Cox rings, and for those spaces having Picard rank two we give an explicit presentation of the Cox ring. Furthermore, we give a complete description of both the Mori chamber and stable base locus decompositions of the effective cone of some spaces of complete skew-forms having Picard rank at most four.Comment: 16 page

Spherical blow-ups of Grassmannians and Mori Dream Spaces

In this paper we classify weak Fano varieties that can be obtained by blowing-up general points in prime Fano varieties. We also classify spherical blow-ups of Grassmannians in general points, and we compute their effective cone. These blow-ups are, in particular, Mori dream spaces. Furthermore, we compute the stable base locus decomposition of the blow-up of a Grassmannian in one point, and we show how it is determined by linear systems of hyperplanes containing the osculating spaces of the Grassmannian at the blown-up point, and by the rational normal curves in the Grassmannian passing through the blown-up point.Comment: 23 pages. Exposition improved and corrected a statement on the stable base locus decomposition in Theorem 1.3 thanks to the comments of the refere

Varieties of sums of powers and moduli spaces of (1,7)-polarized abelian surfaces

We study the geometry of some varieties of sums of powers related to the Klein quartic. This allows us to describe the birational geometry of certain moduli spaces of abelian surfaces. In particular we show that the moduli space $\mathcal{A}_2(1,7)^{-}_{sym}$ of $(1,7)$-polarized abelian surfaces with a symmetric theta structure and an odd theta characteristic is unirational by showing that it admits a dominant morphism from a unirational conic bundle.Comment: 14 page

On Comon's and Strassen's conjectures

Comon's conjecture on the equality of the rank and the symmetric rank of a symmetric tensor, and Strassen's conjecture on the additivity of the rank of tensors are two of the most challenging and guiding problems in the area of tensor decomposition. We survey the main known results on these conjectures, and, under suitable bounds on the rank, we prove them, building on classical techniques used in the case of symmetric tensors, for mixed tensors. Finally, we improve the bound for Comon's conjecture given by flattenings by producing new equations for secant varieties of Veronese and Segre varieties.Comment: 12 page

Moduli of abelian surfaces, symmetric theta structures and theta characteristics

We study the birational geometry of some moduli spaces of abelian varieties with extra structure: in particular, with a symmetric theta structure and an odd theta characteristic. For a $(d_1,d_2)$-polarized abelian surface, we show how the parities of the $d_i$ influence the relation between canonical level structures and symmetric theta structures. For certain values of $d_1$ and $d_2$, a theta characteristic is needed in order to define Theta-null maps. We use these Theta-null maps and preceding work of other authors on the representations of the Heisenberg group to study the birational geometry and the Kodaira dimension of these moduli spaces.Comment: Final version. To appear in Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici (CMH