Morphisms of Projective Varieties from the viewpoint of Minimal Model Theory

In this note we consider the problem of determining which Fano manifolds can be realised as fibres of a Mori fibre space. In particular, we study the case of toric varieties, Fano manifolds with high index and some Fano manifolds with high Picard rank.

We give a brief survey of the concept of birational rigidity, from its origins in the two-dimensional birational geometry, to its current state. The main ingredients of the method of maximal singularities are discussed. The principal results of the theory of birational rigidity of higher-dimensional Fano varieties and fibrations are given and certain natural conjectures are formulated.

In this paper we give a short and elementary proof of a characterization of the projective space in terms of rational curves which was conjectured by Mori and Mukai. A proof was first given in a preprint by K. Cho, Y. Miyaoka and N. Shepherd-Barron. While our proof here is shorter and involves substantial technical simplifications, the essential ideas are taken from that preprint.

We prove that a generic (in the sense of Zariski topology) Fano complete intersection $V$ of the type $(d_1,...,d_k)$ in ${\mathbb P}^{M+k}$, where $d_1+...+d_k=M+k$, is birationally superrigid if $M\geq 7$, $M\geq k+3$ and $\mathop{\rm max} \{d_i\}\geq 4$. In particular, on the variety $V$ there is exactly one structure of a Mori fibre space (or a rationally connected fibre space), the groups of birational and biregular self-maps coincide, $\mathop{\rm Bir} V= \mathop{\rm Au...

In this paper we study smooth toric Fano varieties using primitive relations and toric Mori theory. We show that for any irreducible invariant divisor D in a toric Fano variety X, we have $0\leq\rho_X-\rho_D\leq 3$, for the difference of the Picard numbers of X and D. Moreover, if $\rho_X-\rho_D>0$ (with some additional hypotheses if $\rho_X-\rho_D=1$), we give an explicit birational description of X. Using this result, we show that when dim X=5, we have $\rho_X\leq 9$. In ...

The paper aims to give an account, both historical and geometric, on the diverse geography of rational parametrizations of moduli spaces related to curves. It is a contribution to the book Handbook of Moduli, editors G. Farkas and I. Morrison, to be published by International Press. Refereed version.

An introduction to geography of log models with applications to positive cones of FT varieties and to geometry of minimal models and Mori fibrations.

The main purpose of this paper is to give a simple and non-combinatorial proof of the toric Mori theory. Here, the toric Mori theory means the (log) Minimal Model Program (MMP, for short) for toric varieties. We minimize the arguments on fans and their decompositions. We recommend this paper to the following people: (A) those who are uncomfortable with manipulating fans and their decompositions, (B) those who are familiar with toric geometry but not with the MMP. People i...

We study the connected algebraic groups acting on Mori fibrations $X \to Y$ with $X$ a rational threefold and $\mathrm{dim}(Y) \geq 1$. More precisely, for these fibre spaces we consider the neutral component of their automorphism groups and study their equivariant birational geometry. This is done using, inter alia, minimal model program and Sarkisov program and allows us to determine the maximal connected algebraic subgroups of $\mathrm{Bir}(\mathbb{P}^3)$, recovering most ...

Extending some results of Crauder and Katz, and Ein and Shepherd-Barron on special Cremona transformations, we study birational transformations of the complex projective spaces onto prime Fano manifolds such that the base locus X of the transformations is smooth, irreducible and reduced. We get a complete classification when X has dimension 1, or dimension 2, or codimension 2. We also get partial results when X has dimension 3.