Rationality of Euler-Chow series and finite generation of Cox rings (Q897763)

The paper under review studies the rationality of the Euler-Chow series \[ E^1(X)=\sum_{D\in\mathrm{Pic}(X)}h^0(X,D)t^D, \] where \(X\) is a smooth complex projective variety and \(t\) is a formal variable. A natural problem is to study the interplay of this series with the Cox ring (or the total coordinate ring) of the variety. It is easy to see that the finite generation of the Cox ring of \(X\) implies the rationality of the associated Euler-Chow series. One of the results of this paper is that the converse does not hold: a counterexample is given by the blowup of a smooth quartic surface in \(\mathbb{P}^3\) at a very general point. The paper also gives several examples (of blowups of products of projective spaces at finitely many points) where the Euler-Chow series is not even algebraic; the corresponding Cox rings were previously known not to be finitely generated in those cases.