No label defined (Q4355804)

We give an account of the theory of algebraic cycles where the stress is not on the spate of conjectures (Hodge, Tate, Grothendieck, Bloch-Beilinson, etc.) that define the picture of this theory today, but rather on the key examples that refined and delineated this picture. We concentrate on the geometric aspects of the theory. The model case of the theory of divisors on an algebraic curve (or compact Riemann surface) is dealt with in section 1. The attempt to generalise this theory in higher dimensions is what led to much of the later work. In section 2 we introduce the Chow ring with its relation to Grothendieck's \(K\)-theory via the Grothendieck Riemann-Roch theorem. The theory of divisors on smooth projective varieties is the next best understood case and we describe its features in section 3. A much studied case is that of zero-cycles which we discuss in section 4. Various alternate equivalences were introduced on the group of algebraic cycles; we study these in section 5. We carry on in this section with a survey of the examples that build up our picture of the relation between these equivalences. In section 6 we see the results of the attempt to relate the Chow group to points on an Abelian variety. As mentioned above we do not survey the conjectures in the theory of algebraic cycles. We discuss some of these briefly in section 7. More detailed accounts of these can be found in a book by \textit{P. Deligne}, \textit{J. S. Milne}, \textit{A. Ogus} and \textit{K. Shih} [``Hodge cycles, motives, and Shimura varieties'', Lect. Notes Math. 900 (1982; Zbl 0465.00010)] and an excellent survey by \textit{U. Jannsen} [``Mixed motives and algebraic \(K\)-theory'', Lect. Notes Math. 1400 (1990; Zbl 0691.14001)]. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0864.00048].