On compactifications of affine homology 3-cells into quadric fibrations (Q2197764)

Throughout the paper the base field is the filed of complex numbers \({\mathbb{C}}\). An affine homology \(n\)-cell is a smooth affine \(n\)-fold \(U\) such that \(H^i(U, {\mathbb{Z}}) = 0\) for \( i > 0\). In this paper, the author considers the following problem: Problem 1.1. Let \(f : X \rightarrow C\) be an extremal contraction of relative Picard number one from a smooth projective \( n\)-fold \(X\) to a smooth projective curve \(C\). Let \(U \subset X\) be an open subscheme. (1) If \(U\) is an affine homology \(n\)-cell, then is it isomorphic to \({\mathbb{A}}^n\)? (2) If \(U\) is isomorphic to \({\mathbb{A}}^n\), then can we construct an explicit birational map from \(X\) to a compactification of \({\mathbb{A}}^n\) with Picard number one preserving \(U \cong {\mathbb{A}}^n\)? The answer to Problem 1.1 (1) is negative even when \(n=2\). So more condition should be added to it. Definition 1.1. Let \(f : X \rightarrow C\) and \(U\) be as in Problem 1.1. Let \(D := X \backslash U\) be the boundary divisor. \( (X, D, f)\) is a compactification of \(U\) compatible with \(f\) if \(D\) contains a \(f\)-fiber. When \(D_f \subset D\) is a \(f\)-fiber and \( D_h \subset D\) is the other components, then \((X, D_h, D_f )\) is called a compactification of \(U\) compatible with \(f\). A quadric fibration \(f : X \rightarrow C\) is an extremal contraction onto a curve \( C\) of relative Picard number one and of degree eight. Problem 1.1 (1) is answered by the following theorem: Theorem 1.3. Let \(Q\) be a smooth projective 3-fold and \( q : Q \rightarrow C\) a quadric fibration. Let \(D_h\) be a reduced effective divisor on \(Q\), and \(D_f\) a \(q\)-fiber. Then the following are equivalent. (1) The complement \(Q \backslash (D_h \cup D_f )\) is an affine homology \(3\)-cell. (2) It holds that \(C \cong {\mathbb{P}}^1\) and \(Q \backslash (D_h \cup D_f )\cong {\mathbb{A}}^3\). In other two main theorems, the author proves that all such compactifications of affine homology 3-cells into quadric fibrations such that the boundary divisors contain fibers can be connected by explicit elementary links preserving \({\mathbb{A}}^3\) to the projective \(3\)-space \({\mathbb{P}}^3\). The main technique used in the proofs of theorems is the technique of elementary links.