On images of affine spaces

Homogeneous spaces and generalizations (14M17) Rational and unirational varieties (14M20) Toric varieties, Newton polyhedra, Okounkov bodies (14M25) Affine geometry (14Rxx)

Abstract: We prove that every non-degenerate toric variety, every homogeneous space of a connected linear algebraic group without non-constant invertible regular functions, and every variety covered by affine spaces admits a surjective morphism from an affine space.

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Let \(\mathbb K\) be an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero. An algebraic variety \(X\) over \(\mathbb K\) is called an \(A\)-image if for some positive integer \(m\) there is a surjective morphism from the \(m\)-dimensional affine space \(\mathbb A^m\) to \(X\). Let \(\mathrm{Aut}(X)\) be the automorphism group of \(X\). Define the special automorphism group \(\mathrm{SAut}(X)\) of \(X\) to be the normal subgroup of \(\mathrm{Aut}(X)\) generated by the closed algebraic subgroups of \(\mathrm{Aut}(X)\) isomorphic to the additive group \(\mathbb G_a\) of \(\mathbb K\). An irreducible variety \(X\) is called very flexible if \(\mathrm{SAut}(X)\) acts transitively on \(X\). As a consequence from the definition, \(X\) must be smooth in this case. From known results on flexible varieties the author deduces in Proposition~2 that every very flexible variety is an \(A\)-image. This leads to the following three classes of \(A\)-images. (1) Non-degenerate toric varieties, i.e., toric varieties that are not decomposable into a direct product \(Y\times \mathbb K^\times\) such that \(Y\) is toric. (2) \(A\)-covered varieties, i.e., irreducible algebraic varieties \(X\) with an open covering by charts each of which is isomorphic to \(\mathbb A^n\). (3) Homogeneous spaces \(X=G/H\), where \(H\subset G\) is a closed subgroup in a connected linear algebraic group \(G\), with \(\mathbb K[X]^\times = \mathbb K^\times\) (no non-constant invertible regular functions). The paper consists of three sections. Section~1 introduces the main notions and deduces Proposition~2 from known results on flexible varieties. In section~2 the three classes of \(A\)-images mentioned above are presented. Some concluding remarks and open problems can be found in section 3.

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