We categorify the inclusion–exclusion principle for partially ordered topological spaces and schemes to a filtration on the derived category of sheaves. As a consequence, we obtain functorial spectral sequences that generalize the two spectral sequences of a stratified space and certain Vassiliev-type spectral sequences; we also obtain Euler characteristic analogs in the Grothendieck ring of varieties. As an application, we give an algebro-geometric proof of Vakil and Wood's homological stability conjecture for the space of smooth hypersurface sections of a smooth projective variety. In characteristic zero this conjecture was previously established by Aumonier via topological methods.

We construct and study the moduli of stable hypersurfaces in toric orbifolds. Let X be a projective toric orbifold and $\alpha \in \operatorname{Cl}(X)$ an ample class. The moduli space is constructed as a quotient of the linear system $|\alpha|$ by $G = \operatorname{Aut}(X)$. Since the group G is non-reductive in general, we use new techniques of non-reductive geometric invariant theory. Using the A-discriminant of Gelfand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky, we prove semistability for quasismooth hypersurfaces of toric orbifolds. Further, we prove the existence of a quasi-projective moduli space of quasismooth hypersurfaces in a weighted projective space when the weighted projective space satisfies a certain condition. We also discuss how to proceed when this condition is not satisfied. We prove that the automorphism group of a quasismooth hypersurface of weighted projective space is finite excluding some low degrees.

We show that a sufficiently general hypersurface of degree d in $\mathbb {P}^n$ admits a toric Gröbner degeneration after linear change of coordinates if and only if $d\leq 2n-1$.

We study pencils of hypersurfaces over finite fields $\mathbb {F}_q$ such that each of the $q+1$ members defined over $\mathbb {F}_q$ is smooth.

The main goal of this paper is to construct a compactification of the moduli space of degree $d \geqslant 5$ surfaces in $\mathbb {P}^{3}_{{{\mathbb {C}}}}$, i.e. a parameter space whose interior points correspond to (equivalence classes of) smooth surfaces in $\mathbb {P}^{3}$ and whose boundary points correspond to degenerations of such surfaces. We consider a divisor $D$ on a Fano variety $Z$ as a pair $(Z, D)$ satisfying certain properties. We find a modular compactification of such pairs and, in the case of $Z = {{\mathbb {P}}}^{3}$ and $D$ a surface, use their properties to classify the pairs on the boundary of the moduli space.

We prove the generic Torelli theorem for hypersurfaces in $\mathbb {P}^{n}$ of degree $d$ dividing $n+1$, for $d$ sufficiently large. Our proof involves the higher-order study of the variation of Hodge structure along particular one-parameter families of hypersurfaces that we call ‘Schiffer variations.’ We also analyze the case of degree $4$. Combined with Donagi's generic Torelli theorem and results of Cox and Green, this shows that the generic Torelli theorem for hypersurfaces holds with finitely many exceptions.

Building on work of Segre and Kollár on cubic hypersurfaces, we construct over imperfect fields of characteristic $p\geq 3$ particular hypersurfaces of degree p, which show that geometrically rational schemes that are regular and whose rational points are Zariski dense are not necessarily unirational. A likewise behavior holds for certain cubic surfaces in characteristic $p=2$ .

We show that any smooth projective cubic hypersurface of dimension at least 29 over the rationals contains a rational line. A variation of our methods provides a similar result over p-adic fields. In both cases, we improve on previous results due to the second author and Wooley.

We include an appendix in which we highlight some slight modifications to a recent result of Papanikolopoulos and Siksek. It follows that the set of rational points on smooth projective cubic hypersurfaces of dimension at least 29 is generated via secant and tangent constructions from just a single point.

We prove that a generic homogeneous polynomial of degree $d$ is determined, up to a nonzero constant multiplicative factor, by the vector space spanned by its partial derivatives of order $k$ for $k\leqslant \frac{d}{2}-1$.

For a line arrangement ${\mathcal{A}}$ in the complex projective plane $\mathbb{P}^{2}$, we investigate the compactification $\overline{F}$ in $\mathbb{P}^{3}$ of the affine Milnor fiber $F$ and its minimal resolution $\tilde{F}$. We compute the Chern numbers of $\tilde{F}$ in terms of the combinatorics of the line arrangement ${\mathcal{A}}$. As applications of the computation of the Chern numbers, we show that the minimal resolution is never a quotient of a ball; in addition, we also prove that $\tilde{F}$ is of general type when the arrangement has only nodes or triple points as singularities. Finally, we compute all the Hodge numbers of some $\tilde{F}$ by using some knowledge about the Milnor fiber monodromy of the arrangement.

We define and study twisted Alexander-type invariants of complex hypersurface complements. We investigate torsion properties for the twisted Alexander modules and extend the local-to-global divisibility results of Maxim and of Dimca and Libgober to the twisted setting. In the process, we also study the splitting fields containing the roots of the corresponding twisted Alexander polynomials.

In this note we prove the following surprising characterization: if $X\,\subset \,{{\mathbb{A}}^{n}}$ is an (embedded, non-empty, proper) algebraic variety deûned over a field $k$ of characteristic zero, then $X$ is a hypersurface if and only if the module ${{T}_{{{O}_{{{\mathbb{A}}^{n\,/k}}}}}}(X)$ of logarithmic vector fields of $X$ is a reflexive ${{O}_{{{\mathbb{A}}^{n}}}}$-module. As a consequence of this result, we derive that if ${{T}_{{{O}_{{{\mathbb{A}}^{n\,/k}}}}}}(X)$ is a free ${{O}_{{{\mathbb{A}}^{n}}}}$-module, which is shown to be equivalent to the freeness of the $t$-th exterior power of ${{T}_{{{O}_{{{\mathbb{A}}^{n\,/k}}}}}}(X)$ for some (in fact, any) $t\,\le \,n$, then necessarily $X$ is a Saito free divisor.

We study various measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree in projective space and other varieties. These include the least degree of a rational covering of projective space, and the minimal gonality of a covering family of curves. The theme is that positivity properties of canonical bundles lead to lower bounds on these invariants. In particular, we prove that if $X\subseteq \mathbf{P}^{n+1}$ is a very general smooth hypersurface of dimension $n$ and degree $d\geqslant 2n+1$, then any dominant rational mapping $f:X{\dashrightarrow}\mathbf{P}^{n}$ must have degree at least $d-1$. We also propose a number of open problems, and we show how our methods lead to simple new proofs of results of Ran and Beheshti–Eisenbud concerning varieties of multi-secant lines.

Let $k$ be a field of characteristic $2$. We give a geometric proof that there are no smooth quartic surfaces $S\subset \mathbb{P}_{k}^{3}$ with more than 64 lines (predating work of Degtyarev which improves this bound to 60). We also exhibit a smooth quartic containing 60 lines which thus attains the record in characteristic $2$.

Let τ be the involution changing the sign of two coordinates in ℙ4. We prove that τ induces the identity action on the second Chow group of the intersection of a τ-invariant cubic with a τ-invariant quadric hypersurface in ℙ4. Let lτ and Πτ be the one- and two-dimensional components of the fixed locus of the involution τ. We describe the generalized Prymian associated with the projection of a τ-invariant cubic 𝓵 ⊂ P4 from lτ onto Πτ in terms of the Prymians 𝓅2 and 𝓅3 associated with the double covers of two irreducible components, of degree 2 and 3, respectively, of the reducible discriminant curve. This gives a precise description of the induced action of the involution τ on the continuous part of the Chow group CH2 (𝓵). The action on the subgroup corresponding to 𝓅3 is the identity, and the action on the subgroup corresponding to 𝓅2 is the multiplication by —1.

We give a bound on embedding dimensions of geometric generic fibers in terms of the dimension of the base, for fibrations in positive characteristic. This generalizes the well-known fact that for fibrations over curves, the geometric generic fiber is reduced. We illustrate our results with Fermat hypersurfaces and genus 1 curves.

The aim of this paper is to construct (i) infinitely many families of nonrational ℚ-Fano varieties of arbitrary dimension ≥ 4 with at most quotient singularities, and (ii) twelve families of nonrational ℚ-Fano threefolds with at most terminal singularities among which two are new and the remaining ten give an alternate proof of nonrationality to known examples. These are constructed as weighted hypersurfaces with the reduction mod p method introduced by Kollár [10].

Using vector fields on logarithmic jet spaces we obtain some new positive results for the logarithmic Kobayashi conjecture about the hyperbolicity of complements of curves in the complex projective plane. We are interested here in the cases where logarithmic irregularity is strictly smaller than the dimension. In this setting, we study the case of a very generic curve with two components of degrees d1 ≤ d2 and prove the hyperbolicity of the complement if the degrees satisfy either d1 ≥ 4, or d1 = 3 and d2 ≥ 5, or d1 = 2 and d2 ≥ 8, or d1 = 1 and d2 ≥ 11. We also prove that the complement of a very generic curve of degree d at least equal to 14 in the complex projective plane is hyperbolic, improving slightly, with a new proof, the former bound obtained by El Goul.

We show the existence of surfaces of degree $d$ in ${\mathbb P}^3({\mathbb C})$ with approximately $(3j+2)/(6j(j+1))\,d^3$ singularities of type $A_j, 2\le j\le d-1$. The result is based on Chmutov's construction of nodal surfaces. For the proof we use plane trees related to the theory of Dessins d'Enfants.

Our examples improve the previously known lower bounds for the maximum number $\mu_{A_j}(d)$ of $A_j$-singularities on a surface of degree $d$ in most cases. We also give a generalization to higher dimensions which leads to new lower bounds even in the case of nodal hypersurfaces in ${\mathbb P}^n, n\geq5$.

To conclude, we work out in detail a classical idea of Segre which leads to some interesting examples, for example, to a sextic with 36 cusps.