Vénéreau-type polynomials as potential counterexamples (Q2376551)

The Vénéreau polynomials are a sequence of polynomials \[ b_{m}=y+x^{m}(xz+y(yu+z^{2}))\in\mathbb{C}[x][y,z,u], \] \(m\geq1\), which were proposed by S. Vénéreau as potential counterexamples to important conjectures in affine geometry: the Abhyankar-Sathaye embedding conjecture which asserts that every closed embedding of an affine space into another is equivalent to an embedding as a linear subspace, and the Dolgachev-Weisfeiler conjecture which asks whether every flat fibration from an affine space to another with all fibers also isomorphic to affine spaces is a trivial affine bundle. It is known that the level hypersurfaces of Vénéreau polynomials are isomorphic to affine spaces of dimension \(3\) and that for every \(m\geq1\), the fibration \((b_{m},x):\mathbb{A}^{4}\rightarrow\mathbb{A}^{2}\) is flat with all fibers isomorphic to affine spaces \(\mathbb{A}^{2}\). So \(b_{m}\) provides a counterexample to the Abhyankar-Sathaye embedding conjecture unless it is a \textit{variable} of the polynomial ring \(\mathbb{C}[x,y,z,u]\), i. e., there exists polynomials \(f_{1},f_{2},f_{3}\) such that \(\mathbb{C}[x,y,z,u]=\mathbb{C}[b_{m},f_{1},f_{2},f_{3}]\), and a counterexample to the Dolgachev-Weisfeiler conjecture unless it has the stronger property to be a \(\mathbb{C}[x]\)-\textit{variable} of \(\mathbb{C}[x,y,z,u]\) in the sense that there exists polynomials \(g_{1},g_{2}\) such that \(\mathbb{C}[x,y,z,u]=\mathbb{C}[x,b_{m},g_{1},g_{2}]\). It was established by S. Vénéreau that \(b_{m}\) is indeed a \(\mathbb{C}[x]\)-coordinate for every \(m\geq3\) but the question for \(m=1,2\) remained open. In the article under review, the author introduces a more general class of \textit{Vénéreau -type polynomials} of the form \(f_{Q}=y+xQ\) with \(Q\in\mathbb{C}[x][v,w]\) and he proves that \(b_{m}\) is a coordinate if and only if so is \(f_{Q}\) for \(Q=x^{2m-1}w\). This is applied to recover the fact that \(b_{m}\) is a \(\mathbb{C}[x]\)-coordinate for \(m\geq3\) and to prove the new result that \(b_{2}\) is a \(\mathbb{C}[x]\)-coordinate too. Other properties of polynomials \(f_{Q}\) in relation with the aforementioned conjectures are established.