We consider the space $\mathcal{P}_d$ of smooth complex projective plane curves of degree $d$. There is the tautological family of plane curves defined over $\mathcal{P}_d$, which has an associated monodromy representation $\rho _d: \pi _1(\mathcal{P}_d) \to \textrm{Mod}(\Sigma _g)$ into the mapping class group of the fiber. For $d \le 4$, classical algebraic geometry implies the surjectivity of $\rho _d$. For $d \ge 5$, the existence of a $(d-3)^{rd}$ root of the canonical bundle implies that $\rho _d$ cannot be surjective. The main result of this paper is that for $d = 5$, the image of $\rho _5$ is as large as possible, subject to this constraint. This requires combining the algebro-geometric work of Lönne with Johnson’s theory of the Torelli subgroup of $\textrm{Mod}(\Sigma _g)$.

In this note, we study homology classes in the mirror quintic Calabi–Yau threefold that can be realized by special Lagrangian submanifolds. We have used Picard–Lefschetz theory to establish the monodromy action and to study the orbit of Lagrangian vanishing cycles. For many prime numbers $p,$ we can compute the orbit modulo p. We conjecture that the orbit in homology with coefficients in $\mathbb {Z}$ can be determined by these orbits with coefficients in $\mathbb {Z}_p$ .

We first characterize the automorphism groups of Hodge structures of cubic threefolds and cubic fourfolds. Then we determine for some complex projective manifolds of small dimension (cubic surfaces, cubic threefolds, and nonhyperelliptic curves of genus 3 or 4), the action of their automorphism groups on Hodge structures of associated cyclic covers, and thus confirm conjectures made by Kudla and Rapoport in (Pacific J. Math. 260(2) (2012), 565–581).

A question of Griffiths–Schmid asks when the monodromy group of an algebraic family of complex varieties is arithmetic. We resolve this in the affirmative for a class of algebraic surfaces known as Atiyah–Kodaira manifolds, which have base and fibers equal to complete algebraic curves. Our methods are topological in nature and involve an analysis of the ‘geometric’ monodromy, valued in the mapping class group of the fiber.

The germ of the universal isomonodromic deformation of a logarithmic connection on a stable $n$-pointed genus $g$ curve always exists in the analytic category. The first part of this article investigates under which conditions it is the analytic germification of an algebraic isomonodromic deformation. Up to some minor technical conditions, this turns out to be the case if and only if the monodromy of the connection has finite orbit under the action of the mapping class group. The second part of this work studies the dynamics of this action in the particular case of reducible rank 2 representations and genus $g>0$, allowing to classify all finite orbits. Both of these results extend recent ones concerning the genus 0 case.

We extend the Kuga–Satake construction to the case of limit mixed Hodge structures of K3 type. We use this to study the geometry and Hodge theory of degenerations of Kuga–Satake abelian varieties associated with polarized variations of K3 type Hodge structures over the punctured disc.

We show that integral monodromy groups of Kloosterman $\ell$-adic sheaves of rank $n\geqslant 2$ on $\mathbb{G}_{m}/\mathbb{F}_{q}$ are as large as possible when the characteristic $\ell$ is large enough, depending only on the rank. This variant of Katz’s results over $\mathbb{C}$ was known by works of Gabber, Larsen, Nori and Hall under restrictions such as $\ell$ large enough depending on $\operatorname{char}(\mathbb{F}_{q})$ with an ineffective constant, which is unsuitable for applications. We use the theory of finite groups of Lie type to extend Katz’s ideas, in particular the classification of maximal subgroups of Aschbacher and Kleidman–Liebeck. These results will apply to study hyper-Kloosterman sums and their reductions in forthcoming work.

Let $S$ be a surface of general type. In this article, when there exists a relatively minimal hyperelliptic fibration $f:\,S\,\to \,{{\mathbb{P}}^{1}}$ whose slope is less than or equal to four, we give a lower bound on the Euler–Poincaré characteristic of $S$. Furthermore, we prove that our bound is the best possible by giving required hyperelliptic fibrations.

We prove that for every ordinary genus-2 curve $X$ over a finite field $\kappa$ of characteristic 2 with $\text{Aut}\left( X/\kappa \right)\,=\,\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\,\times \,{{S}_{3}}$ there exist $\text{SL}\left( 2,\,\kappa \left[\!\left[ s \right]\!\right] \right)$-representations of ${{\pi }_{1}}\left( X \right)$ such that the image of ${{\pi }_{1}}\left( \overline{X} \right)$ is infinite. This result produces a family of examples similar to Y. Laszlo’s counterexample to A. J. de Jong’s question regarding the finiteness of the geometric monodromy of representations of the fundamental group.

We study the moduli space of a product of stable varieties over the field of complex numbers, as defined via the minimal model program. Our main results are: (a) taking products gives a well-defined morphism from the product of moduli spaces of stable varieties to the moduli space of a product of stable varieties; (b) this map is always finite étale; and (c) this map very often is an isomorphism. Our results generalize and complete the work of Van Opstall in dimension $1$. The local results rely on a study of the cotangent complex using some derived algebro-geometric methods, while the global ones use some differential-geometric input.

We prove a Noether-Lefschetz type theorem for varieties of r-planes in complete intersections. We then use it to study the Abel-Jacobi map of planes on a smooth cubic fivefold.

The moduli space of smooth real binary octics has five connected components. They parametrize the real binary octics whose defining equations have 0, … , 4 complex-conjugate pairs of roots respectively. We show that each of these five components has a real hyperbolic structure in the sense that each is isomorphic as a real-analytic manifold to the quotient of an open dense subset of 5-dimensional real hyperbolic space $\mathbb{R}{{\mathbb{H}}^{5}}$ by the action of an arithmetic subgroup of Isom$\left( \mathbb{R}{{\mathbb{H}}^{5}} \right)$. These subgroups are commensurable to discrete hyperbolic reflection groups, and the Vinberg diagrams of the latter are computed.

We provide certain unusual generalizations of Clausen's and Orr's theorems for solutions of fourth-order and fifth-order generalized hypergeometric equations. As an application, we present several examples of algebraic transformations of Calabi–Yau differential equations.

We introduce the notion of an alternate product of Frobenius manifolds and we give, after Ciocan-Fontanine et al., an interpretation of the Frobenius manifold structure canonically attached to the quantum cohomology of G(r,n+1) in terms of alternate products. We also investigate the relationship with the alternate Thom–Sebastiani product of Laurent polynomials.

It is well known that multiple polylogarithms give rise to good unipotent variations of mixed Hodge-Tate structures. In this paper we shall explicitly determine these structures related to multiple logarithms and some other multiple polylogarithms of lower weights. The purpose of this explicit construction is to give some important applications. First we study the limit of mixed Hodge-Tate structures and make a conjecture relating the variations of mixed Hodge-Tate structures of multiple logarithms to those of general multiple polylogarithms. Then following Deligne and Beilinson we describe an approach to defining the single-valued real analytic version of the multiple polylogarithms which generalizes the well-known result of Zagier on classical polylogarithms. In the process we find some interesting identities relating single-valued multiple polylogarithms of the same weight $K$ when $K=2$ and 3. At the end of this paper, motivated by Zagier's conjecture we pose a problem which relates the special values of multiple Dedekind zeta functions of a number field to the single-valued version of multiple polylogarithms.

In this article we determine the global geometry of the planar quadratic differential systems with a weak focus of third order. This class plays a significant role in the context of Hilbert's 16-th problem. Indeed, all examples of quadratic differential systems with at least four limit cycles, were obtained by perturbing a system in this family. We use the algebro-geometric concepts of divisor and zero-cycle to encode global properties of the systems and to give structure to this class. We give a theorem of topological classification of such systems in terms of integer-valued affine invariants. According to the possible values taken by them in this family we obtain a total of 18 topologically distinct phase portraits. We show that inside the class of all quadratic systems with the topology of the coefficients, there exists a neighborhood of the family of quadratic systems with a weak focus of third order and which may have graphics but no polycycle in the sense of [15] and no limit cycle, such that any quadratic system in this neighborhood has at most four limit cycles.

Let f: X → B be a fiber space over a curve B whose general fiber F belongs to one of the following type: 1) F is of general type and satisfying some mild conditions, 2) F is with trivial canonical sheaf. In this note, a numerical characterization for f: X → B to be birationally trivial is given.

In this paper we describe projective curves and surfaces such that almost all their hyperplane sections are projectively equivalent. Our description is complete for curves and close to being complete for smooth surfaces. In the appendix we make some remarks on connections between the mentioned property of a projective variety and its adjunction properties.