Prelog Chow groups of self-products of degenerations of cubic threefolds (Q2115337)

In the paper under review, the authors add a step more in the research about the open problem that tries to find the relationship among varieties that are rational, non-rational or stably irrational. In the paper the varieties are cubic threefolds and the authors take into account previous research developed by other authors and themselves. The main result of the paper consists of the consideration of a degeneration of a very general cubic threefold into the union of a hyperplane and a quadric in \(\mathbb{P}^4\). After some transformations they end up with a family whose very general fibre of it is the self product of a very general smooth cubic threefold. Using the properties of the central fibre they compute the (saturated numerical) prelog Chow group of that self product. For the time being it is unknown whether smooth cubic threefolds have an (integral Chow-theoretic) decomposition of the diagonal or whether they are stably rational or not in general.