The perfect cone compactification of quotients of type IV domains

The perfect cone compactification is a toroidal compactification which can be defined for locally symmetric varieties. Let $$\overline{D_{L}/\widetilde{O}^{+}(L)}^{p}$$ D L / O ~ + ( L ) ¯ p be the perfect cone compactification of the quotient of the type IV domain $$D_{L}$$ D L associated to an even lattice L. In our main theorem we show that the pair $${ (\overline{D_{L}/\widetilde{O}^{+}(L)}^{p}, \Delta /2) }$$ ( D L / O ~ + ( L ) ¯ p , Δ / 2 ) has klt singularities, where $$\Delta $$ Δ is the closure of the branch divisor of $${ D_{L}/\widetilde{O}^{+}(L) }$$ D L / O ~ + ( L ) . In particular this applies to the perfect cone compactification of the moduli space of 2d-polarised K3 surfaces with ADE singularities when d is square-free.

Kähler–Einstein Metrics on Smooth Fano Symmetric Varieties with Picard Number One

Symmetric varieties are normal equivarient open embeddings of symmetric homogeneous spaces, and they are interesting examples of spherical varieties. We prove that all smooth Fano symmetric varieties with Picard number one admit Kähler–Einstein metrics by using a combinatorial criterion for K-stability of Fano spherical varieties obtained by Delcroix. For this purpose, we present their algebraic moment polytopes and compute the barycenter of each moment polytope with respect to the Duistermaat–Heckman measure.

Kähler geometry of horosymmetric varieties, and application to Mabuchi’s K-energy functional

We introduce a class of almost homogeneous varieties contained in the class of spherical varieties and containing horospherical varieties as well as complete symmetric varieties. We develop Kähler geometry on these varieties, with applications to canonical metrics in mind, as a generalization of the Guillemin–Abreu–Donaldson geometry of toric varieties. Namely we associate convex functions with Hermitian metrics on line bundles, and express the curvature form in terms of this function, as well as the corresponding Monge–Ampère volume form and scalar curvature. We provide an expression for the Mabuchi functional and derive as an application a combinatorial sufficient condition of properness similar to one obtained by Li, Zhou and Zhu on group compactifications. This finally translates to a sufficient criterion of existence of constant scalar curvature Kähler metrics thanks to the recent work of Chen and Cheng. It yields infinitely many new examples of explicit Kähler classes admitting cscK metrics.

Shimura varieties at level and Galois representations

We show that the compactly supported cohomology of certain $\text{U}(n,n)$- or $\text{Sp}(2n)$-Shimura varieties with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{1}(p^{\infty })$-level vanishes above the middle degree. The only assumption is that we work over a CM field $F$ in which the prime $p$ splits completely. We also give an application to Galois representations for torsion in the cohomology of the locally symmetric spaces for $\text{GL}_{n}/F$. More precisely, we use the vanishing result for Shimura varieties to eliminate the nilpotent ideal in the construction of these Galois representations. This strengthens recent results of Scholze [On torsion in the cohomology of locally symmetric varieties, Ann. of Math. (2) 182 (2015), 945–1066; MR 3418533] and Newton–Thorne [Torsion Galois representations over CM fields and Hecke algebras in the derived category, Forum Math. Sigma 4 (2016), e21; MR 3528275].

Birational geometry of the moduli space of quartic surfaces

By work of Looijenga and others, one understands the relationship between Geometric Invariant Theory (GIT) and Baily–Borel compactifications for the moduli spaces of degree-$2$ $K3$ surfaces, cubic fourfolds, and a few other related examples. The similar-looking cases of degree-$4$ $K3$ surfaces and double Eisenbud–Popescu–Walter (EPW) sextics turn out to be much more complicated for arithmetic reasons. In this paper, we refine work of Looijenga in order to handle these cases. Specifically, in analogy with the so-called Hassett–Keel program for the moduli space of curves, we study the variation of log canonical models for locally symmetric varieties of Type IV associated to $D$-lattices. In particular, for the $19$-dimensional case, we conjecturally obtain a continuous one-parameter interpolation between the GIT and Baily–Borel compactifications for the moduli of degree-$4$ $K3$ surfaces. The analogous $18$-dimensional case, which corresponds to hyperelliptic degree-$4$ $K3$ surfaces, can be verified by means of Variation of Geometric Invariant Theory (VGIT) quotients.