On numerically effective log canonical divisors.
Let X be a smooth algebraic hypersurface in ℂⁿ. There is a proper polynomial mapping F: ℂⁿ → ℂⁿ, such that the set of ramification values of F contains the hypersurface X.
The classical Segre theory gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a plane curve to be a branch curve of a (generic) projection of a smooth surface in . We generalize this result for smooth surfaces in a projective space of any dimension in the following way: given two plane curves, and , we give a necessary and sufficient condition for to be the branch curve of a surface in and to be the image of the double curve of a -model of . In the classical Segre theory, a plane curve...
This is the text of a talk given at the XVII Convegno dellUnione Matematica Italiana held at Milano, September 8-13, 2003. I would like to thank Angelo Lopez and Ciro Ciliberto for the kind invitation to the conference. I survey some numerical conjectures and theorems concerning relations between the index, the pseudo-index and the Picard number of a Fano variety. The results I refer to are contained in the paper [3], wrote in collaboration with Bonavero, Debarre and Druel.
We discuss the problem of stable conjugacy of finite subgroups of Cremona groups. We compute the stable birational invariant H 1(G, Pic(X)) for cyclic groups of prime order.