Trisecant flops, their associated \(K3\) surfaces and the rationality of some cubic fourfolds (Q6172681)

A very general cubic fourfold is conjectured to be irrational and the locus of rational ones, also conjecturally, should be the union of certain irreducible divisors \(\mathcal{C}_d\) (in their moduli \(\mathcal{C}\)), of special admissible cubic fourfolds of discriminant \(d\); their rationality relies on the existence of certain \(K3\) surface (further references on this \textit{ Kuznetsov Conjecture} can be found in the Introduction of the paper under review). In this paper, the authors take the point of view of Mori Theory to describe the cases \(d=14, 26, 38\) and \(42\), in fact the first four admissible values of \(d\) (cubics fourfolds in \(\mathcal{C}_d\), \(d=14,26,38\), were known to be rational); and furthermore to prove (see Theorem 5.12) the rationality of every cubic fourfold in \(\mathcal{C}_{42}\), the first not known case. The birational maps from \(X\) to a rational fourfold \(W\) are displayed in a, say, Mori Theory diagram (see (0.1)) in such a way that the role of the \(K3\) surface is very explicit: a non-minimal birational model in \(W\) can be constructed via some very peculiar linear systems of hyperplane sections.