A classification of terminal quartic 3-folds and applications to rationality questions (Q453308)

A Fano variety is a Gorenstein variety such that its anticanonical divisor is ample. Fano varieties play a very important role in birational geometry since they appear as fibers of the Mori fiber spaces, that are one of the possible end products of the MMP algorithm. The main result of the article under review is a geometric characterization of terminal Gorenstein quartic 3-folds that are not factorial. The author proves that, if a terminal Gorenstein quartic 3-fold \(Y\) is not factorial, then either a small factorialization of \(Y\) has a structure of conic bundle or \(Y\) contains one of the following: a scroll; a del Pezzo surface; an anticanonically embedded plane. The author proves also an analogue statement for terminal Gorenstein Fano 3-folds \(Y_{2g-2}\subseteq\mathbb{P}^g\) of rank one and genus \(g\). The main technique consists in running an MMP on a small factorialization of \(Y\). If the MMP involves at least one divisorial contraction, then the study of a suitable system of diophantine equations allows to determine a finite number of possibilities for the divisorial contractions and obtain the precise characterization of the statement. The case where the MMP is a sequence of flips is proved separately. As an application of these techniques, it is proved in the article that, in a certain number of cases, a nonfactorial terminal Gorenstein quartic 3-fold is rational.