A projective variety with discrete, non-finitely generated automorphism group (Q1745396)

In this paper, given any ground field \(\mathbf{k}\) which is either of characteristic zero or a transcendental extension of \(\mathbb{F}_p\), the author constructs a smooth projective variety of dimension \(6\) over \(\mathbf{k}\) whose automorphism group is discrete (that is \(X\) has no nonzero global vector fields) but not finitely generated. This result is striking, because all previous known examples of automorphisms group of projective varieties were finitely generated. On the contrary, when relaxing the projective assumptions, pathological examples have been built by \textit{J. Blanc} and \textit{A. Dubouloz} [Int. Math. Res. Not. 2015, No. 2, 422--459 (2015; Zbl 1320.14072)]. The second main result of the author, which results from a variant his main construction, is to produce a smooth complex projective variety with infinitely many real forms. Again this is a very rare phenomenon: according to a result of \textit{A. Borel} and \textit{J.-P. Serre} [Comment. Math. Helv. 39, 111--164 (1964; Zbl 0143.05901)], this cannot happen if \(\pi_0(\mathrm{Aut}(X))\) is an arithmetic group.