Stable rationality of quadric and cubic surface bundle fourfolds (Q1999420)

A variety over a field \(k\) is {\em stably rational} if some field of rational functions in finitely many variables over its function field is isomorphic over \(k\) to a field of rational functions over \(k\). In the present paper, the authors prove that a very general hypersurface of bidegree \((2,3)\) in \(\mathbb P^2\times \mathbb P^3\) over \(\mathbb C\) is not stably rational, and also produce loci of rational hypersurfaces of this bidegree. This settles the last open case of hypersurfaces of \(\mathbb P^2\times \mathbb P^3\) of bidegrees \((2,d)\) and \((e,3)\), \(d,e\geq 2\); all very general such hypersurfaces are now known not to be stably rational. The case of bidegree \((2,2)\) was previously proved by \textit{B. Hassett} et al. [Acta Math. 220, No. 2, 341--365 (2018; Zbl 1420.14115)] and the cases of \(d\geq 4\) or \(e\geq 3\) were previously settled by \textit{H. Ahmadinezhad} and \textit{T. Okada} [Épijournal de Géom. Algébr., EPIGA 2, Article No. 5, 13 p. (2018; Zbl 1422.14022)] and \textit{I. Krylov} and \textit{T. Okada} [``Stable rationality of del Pezzo fibrations of low degree over projective spaces'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1701.08372}]. The authors of the present paper use the method of the papers by \textit{C. Voisin} [Invent. Math. 201, No. 1, 207--237 (2015; Zbl 1327.14223)] and \textit{J.-L. Colliot-Thélène} and \textit{A. Pirutka} [Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér. (4) 49, No. 2, 371--397 (2016; Zbl 1371.14028)], which applies to generically smooth projective morphisms \(X\to B\) with positive-dimensional fibers where \(B\) is a quasiprojective variety over an algebraically closed field. If there is a closed point of \(B\) whose fiber is not universally \(CH_0\)-trivial but admits a proper universally \(CH_0\)-trivial resolution of singularities, then the fiber of a very general closed point of \(B\) is not stably rational. Here one says that a proper variety is {\em universally \(CH_0\)-trivial} if its \(0\)-dimensional algebraic cycles over any field extension are classified under rational equivalence just by their degree. In addition to using this method, the authors also further develop it, proving a number of technical results. As another application of their methods, the authors also produce a smooth cubic surface \(X\) over \(\mathbb C(x,y)\) such that the cokernel of the canonical map from the Brauer group of \(\mathbb C(x,y)\) to the Brauer group of \(X\) contains a nontrivial \(2\)-torsion class which is unramified on any fourfold model of \(X\).