On deformations of quintic and septic hypersurfaces (Q2296330)

Motivated by an old question of \textit{S. Mori} [J. Math. Kyoto Univ. 15, 619--646 (1975; Zbl 0332.14019)] which states that in dimension at least three, any smooth specialization of a hypersurface of prime degree is again a hypersurface, with a positive answer to this question only known in degrees two and three, the authors, in this paper, settle the case of quintic hypersurfaces (in arbitrary dimension) as well as the case of septics in dimension three. These results follow from numerical characterizations of the corresponding hypersurfaces. In the case of quintics, it extends famous work of \textit{E. Horikawa} [Invent. Math. 31, 43--85 (1975; Zbl 0317.14018)] who analysed deformations of quintic surfaces.