Flexible affine cones and flexible coverings (Q1794594)

Take \(X\) an affine variety over an algebraically closed \(k\). The \textit{special automorphism group} of \(X\) is the subgroup of the automorphims of \(X\) generated by all the \((k,+)\)-actions. The variety \(X\) is said to be \textit{flexible} when the special automorphism group acts transitively on the regular locus of \(X\). The first result in the paper under review is a criterion for flexibility of affine cones. To be concrete (see Theorem 1.4) the affine cone over a normal projective variety covered by flexible affine open subsets whose complement in \(Y\) is the support of a \(\mathbb{Q}\)-divisor linearly equivalent to a hyperplane section of \(Y\) is flexible. This is applied to show (see Theorem 2.20) that the affine cone over the secant (resp. tangential) variety of a Segre-Veronese (resp. Segre) variety is flexible. Moreover, see Theorem 4.5, affine cones over Fano 3-folds are considered. Finally (cf. Theorem 5.4), the total coordinate spaces (see Definition 5.1) of smooth Del Pezzo surfaces (among others, see Theorem 5.9) are shown to be flexible.