Hilbert modular varieties of Galois quartic fields (Q677623)

Let \(k\) be a totally real number field of degree \(n\) over \(\mathbb Q\) with ring of integers \(\mathcal O_k\), and let \(\mathcal H^n\) be the product of \(n\) copies of the Poincaré upper half plane. Then the quasi-projective variety \(PSL_2 (\mathcal O_k) \backslash \mathcal H^n\) can be compactified in a natural way by adding \(h_k\) points, where \(h_k\) is the class number of \(k\). The Hilbert modular variety of \(k\) is obtained by desingularizing this compact variety. In this paper the author proves that Hilbert modular varieties of Galois quartic fields containing units of norm \(-1\) have genus greater than one and therefore are not rational.