Belyi's theorem for complete intersections of general type

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Publication:2396616



Abstract: We give a Belyi-type characterisation of smooth complete intersections of general type over mathbbC which can be defined over . Our proof uses the higher-dimensional analogue of the Shafarevich boundedness conjecture for families of canonically polarized varieties, finiteness results for maps to varieties of general type, and rigidity theorems for Lefschetz pencils of complete intersections.


Belyi's theorem for curves states that a smooth projective curve \(X\) over \(\mathbb{C}\) is definable over \(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}\) if and only if there exists a meromorphic function \(f:X \to \mathbb{P}^{1}_{\mathbb{C}}\) ramified over at most three points. This was the starting point of Grothendieck's theory of dessins d'enfants, in which he proposed the study of the absolute Galois group \(\mathrm{Gal}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}})\) through its action on Belyi functions. The result of Belyi was later extended to complex surfaces by \textit{G. González-Diez} [Am. J. Math. 130, No. 1, 59--74 (2008; Zbl 1158.14015)], where the role of Belyi functions is played by Lefschetz functions, that is, compositions of Lefschetz pencils \(X \dashrightarrow \mathbb{P}^{1}_{\mathbb{C}}\) with rational functions \(\mathbb{P}^{1}_{\mathbb{C}}\to \mathbb{P}^{1}_{\mathbb{C}}\). In this paper, the author follows a similar strategy to give a Belyi-type characterisation of smooth complete intersections \(X\) of general type over \(\mathbb{C}\) which can be defined over \(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}\). More precisely, it is proved that such a variety \(X\) can be defined over \(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}\) if and only if there exists a Lefschetz function \(X \dashrightarrow \mathbb{P}^{1}_{\mathbb{C}}\) with at most three critical points. Contrary to the 2-dimensional case, the general proof poses several technical difficulties which require new results on finiteness of maps to varieties of general type and rigidity of Lefschetz pencils of complete intersections.











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