Differential Geometry and Physics Seminar

Speaker: Ron Donagi, UPenn

Title: On some new irrationality results

Abstract: An algebraic variety X is rational if a Zariski-open subset of X is isomorphic to a Zariski-open subset of projective space. A weaker property is unirationality: X is unirational if a Zariski-open subset of projective space maps onto a Zariski-open subset of X. These properties are equivalent in dimensions 1 and 2. In the seventies it was discovered that they are not equivalent in dimension 3, as several different approaches succeeded in proving irrationality of some unirational varieties. The theory of Hodge atoms, recently developed by Katzarkov, Kontsevich, Pantev and Yu, uses ideas from mirror symmetry and quantum cohomology to exhibit new birational invariants capable of proving irrationality of some 4-dimensional unirational varieties. We illustrate the power of this new technique by applying it to the 4 dimensional intersection of quadrics in P^7.