Simple cyclic covers of the plane and the Seshadri constants of some general hypersurfaces in weighted projective space

Let $$X \subset {\mathbb P}(1,1,1,m)$$ X ⊂ P ( 1 , 1 , 1 , m ) be a general hypersurface of degree md for some for $$d\ge 2$$ d ≥ 2 and $$m\ge 3$$ m ≥ 3 . We prove that the Seshadri constant $$\varepsilon ( {\mathcal O}_X(1), x)$$ ε ( O X ( 1 ) , x ) at a general point $$x\in X$$ x ∈ X lies in the interval $$\left[ \sqrt{d}- \frac{d}{m}, \sqrt{d}\right] $$ d - d m , d and thus approaches the possibly irrational number $$\sqrt{d}$$ d as m grows. The main step is a detailed study of the case where X is a simple cyclic cover of the plane.

Newton Polygon Stratification of the Torelli Locus in Unitary Shimura Varieties

We study the intersection of the Torelli locus with the Newton polygon stratification of the modulo $p$ reduction of certain Shimura varieties. We develop a clutching method to show that the intersection of the open Torelli locus with some Newton polygon strata is non-empty. This allows us to give a positive answer, under some compatibility conditions, to a question of Oort about smooth curves in characteristic $p$ whose Newton polygons are an amalgamate sum. As an application, we produce infinitely many new examples of Newton polygons that occur for smooth curves that are cyclic covers of the projective line. Most of these arise in inductive systems that demonstrate unlikely intersections of the open Torelli locus with the Newton polygon stratification in Siegel modular varieties. In addition, for the 20 special Shimura varieties found in Moonen’s work, we prove that all Newton polygon strata intersect the open Torelli locus (if $p>>0$ in the supersingular cases).

Topology of Subvarieties of Complex Semi-abelian Varieties

We use the non-proper Morse theory of Palais–Smale to investigate the topology of smooth closed subvarieties of complex semi-abelian varieties and that of their infinite cyclic covers. As main applications, we obtain the finite generation (except in the middle degree) of the corresponding integral Alexander modules as well as the signed Euler characteristic property and generic vanishing for rank-one local systems on such subvarieties. Furthermore, we give a more conceptual (topological) interpretation of the signed Euler characteristic property in terms of vanishing of Novikov homology. As a byproduct, we prove a generic vanishing result for the $L^2$-Betti numbers of very affine manifolds. Our methods also recast June Huh’s extension of Varchenko’s conjecture to very affine manifolds and provide a generalization of this result in the context of smooth closed sub-varieties of semi-abelian varieties.

ORBIFOLD ASPECTS OF CERTAIN OCCULT PERIOD MAPS

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).