Geometry of the tetrahedron space

Let X^° be the space of all labeled tetrahedra in P³. In [E. Babson, P.E. Gunnells, R. Scott, A smooth space of tetrahedra, Adv. Math. 165(2) (2002) 285-312] we constructed a smooth symmetric compactification of X^°. In this article we show that the complement is a divisor with normal crossings, and we compute the cohomology ring .     

On the geometry of complete intersection toric varieties

In this paper we give a geometric characterization of the cones of toric varieties that are complete intersections. In particular, we prove that the class of complete intersection cones is the smallest class of cones which is closed under direct sum and contains all simplex cones. Further, we show that the number of the extreme rays of such a cone, which is less than or equal to 2n − 2, is exactly 2n − 2 if and only if the cone is a bipyramidal cone, where n > 1 is the dimension of the cone. Finally, we characterize all toric varieties whose associated cones are complete intersection cones. Received: 4 July 2005     

Scorza varieties and Jordan algebras

In this paper, I give two very direct proves of the correspondance between a geometric object (Scorza varieties) and an algebraic one (Jordan algebras). I also give a short proof of the homogeneity of Scorza varieties, and a new and very simple proof of properties of the automorphism group of a Jordan algebra.     

Birational invariants in the case of prime characteristic

The Frobenius automorphism of the function field allows to define some discrete birational invariants of algebraic manifolds usingp ^s -th powers of differentials. Examples of algebraic hypersurfaces are sufficient to show the independence of the familiar birational invariants.     

Toric degenerations of spherical varieties

We prove that any affine, resp. polarized projective, spherical variety admits a flat degeneration to an affine, resp. polarized projective, toric variety. Motivated by mirror symmetry, we give conditions for the limit toric variety to be a Gorenstein Fano, and provide many examples. We also provide an explanation for the limits as boundary points of the moduli space of stable pairs whose existence is predicted by the Minimal Model Program.     

Normally generated line bundles of smallest degree on curves

In this paper we study the embeddings of smallest degree of a generic curveC of genusg as a projectively normal curve.

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Sunto In questo articolo studiamo le immersioni di grado minimo di una generica curvaC di genereg come curva proiettivamente normale.

     

Hadamard products of hypersurfaces

In this paper we characterize hypersurfaces for which their Hadamard product is still a hypersurface Then we study hypersurfaces and, more generally, varieties which are idempotent under Hadamard powers.     

The doubles of a numerical semigroup

Let S be a numerical semigroup and let p be a positive integer. Then the quotient is also a numerical semigroup. When p=2 we say that is half of the numerical semigroup S. Dually, we say that S is a double of the numerical semigroup . We characterize the set of all doubles of a numerical semigroup. We also give some alternative proofs and improvements for some results that we find in previous papers.     

On toric varieties which are almost set-theoretic complete intersections

We describe a class of affine toric varieties V that are set-theoretically minimally defined by binomial equations over fields of any characteristic.     

Toric sheaves,stability and fibrations

For an equivariant reflexive sheaf over a polarised toric variety, we study slope stability of its reflexive pullback along a toric fibration. Examples of such fibrations include equivariant blow-ups and toric locally trivial fibrations. We show that stability (resp. unstability) is preserved under such pullbacks for so-called adiabatic polarisations. In the strictly semistable situation, under locally freeness assumptions, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the graded object to ensure stability of the pulled back sheaf. As applications, we provide various stable perturbations of semistable tangent sheaves, either by changing the polarisation, or by blowing-up a subvariety. Finally, our results apply uniformly in specific flat families and induce injective maps between the associated moduli spaces.     

The degree of a Schubert variety

We study integration along Bott-Samelson cycles. As an application the degree of a Schubert variety on a flag manifold G/B is evaluated in terms of certain Cartan numbers of G.     

Mixed ladder determinantal varieties from two-sided ladders

We study the family of ideals defined by mixed size minors of two-sided ladders of indeterminates. We compute their Gröbner bases with respect to a skew-diagonal monomial order, then we use them to compute the height of the ideals. We show that these ideals correspond to a family of irreducible projective varieties, that we call mixed ladder determinantal varieties. We show that these varieties are arithmetically Cohen-Macaulay, and we characterize the arithmetically Gorenstein ones. Our main result consists in proving that mixed ladder determinantal varieties belong to the same G-biliaison class of a linear variety.     

Severi varieties

R. Hartshorne conjectured and F. Zak proved (cf [6,p.9]) that any smooth non-degenerate complex algebraic variety with satisfies denotes the secant variety of X; when X is smooth it is simply the union of all the secant and tangent lines to X). In this article, I deal with the limiting case of this theorem, namely the Severi varieties, defined by the conditions and . I want to give a different proof of a theorem of F. Zak classifying all Severi varieties. F. Zak proves that there exists only four Severi varieties and then realises a posteriori that all of them are homogeneous; here I will work in another direction: I prove a priori that any Severi variety is homogeneous and then deduce more quickly their classification, satisfying R. Lazarsfeld et A. Van de Ven's wish [6, p.18]. By the way, I give a very brief proof of the fact that the derivatives of the equation of Sec(X), which is a cubic hypersurface, determine a birational morphism of . I wish to thank Laurent Manivel for helping me in writing this article. Received in final form: 29 March 2001 / Published online: 1 February 2002