Decomposition of the Diagonal

This chapter explains the method initiated by Bloch and Srinivas, which leads to statements of the following: if a smooth projective variety has trivial Chow groups of k-cycles homologous to 0 for k ≤ c − 1, then its transcendental cohomology has geometric coniveau ≤ c. This result is a vast generalization of Mumford's theorem. A major open problem is the converse of this result. It turns out that statements of this kind are a consequence of a general spreading principle for rational equivalence. Consider a smooth projective family X → B and a cycle Z → B, everything defined over C; then, if at the very general point b ∈ B, the restricted cycle Z𝒳b ⊂ X𝒳b is rationally equivalent to 0, there exist a dense Zariski open set U ⊂ B and an integer N such that NZsubscript U is rationally equivalent to 0 on Xsubscript U.