Moduli spaceIn mathematics, in particular algebraic geometry, a moduli space is a geometric space (usually a scheme or an algebraic stack) whose points represent algebro-geometric objects of some fixed kind, or isomorphism classes of such objects. Such spaces frequently arise as solutions to classification problems: If one can show that a collection of interesting objects (e.g., the smooth algebraic curves of a fixed genus) can be given the structure of a geometric space, then one can parametrize such objects by introducing coordinates on the resulting space.
Guido CastelnuovoGuido Castelnuovo (14 August 1865 – 27 April 1952) was an Italian mathematician. He is best known for his contributions to the field of algebraic geometry, though his contributions to the study of statistics and probability theory are also significant. Castelnuovo was born in Venice. His father, Enrico Castelnuovo, was a novelist and campaigner for the unification of Italy. His mother Emma Levi was a relative of Cesare Lombroso and David Levi. His wife Elbina Marianna Enriques was the sister of mathematician Federigo Enriques and zoologist Paolo Enriques.
Segre embeddingIn mathematics, the Segre embedding is used in projective geometry to consider the cartesian product (of sets) of two projective spaces as a projective variety. It is named after Corrado Segre. The Segre map may be defined as the map taking a pair of points to their product (the XiYj are taken in lexicographical order). Here, and are projective vector spaces over some arbitrary field, and the notation is that of homogeneous coordinates on the space. The image of the map is a variety, called a Segre variety.
Nef line bundleIn algebraic geometry, a line bundle on a projective variety is nef if it has nonnegative degree on every curve in the variety. The classes of nef line bundles are described by a convex cone, and the possible contractions of the variety correspond to certain faces of the nef cone. In view of the correspondence between line bundles and divisors (built from codimension-1 subvarieties), there is an equivalent notion of a nef divisor. More generally, a line bundle L on a proper scheme X over a field k is said to be nef if it has nonnegative degree on every (closed irreducible) curve in X.
Italian school of algebraic geometryIn relation to the history of mathematics, the Italian school of algebraic geometry refers to mathematicians and their work in birational geometry, particularly on algebraic surfaces, centered around Rome roughly from 1885 to 1935. There were 30 to 40 leading mathematicians who made major contributions, about half of those being Italian. The leadership fell to the group in Rome of Guido Castelnuovo, Federigo Enriques and Francesco Severi, who were involved in some of the deepest discoveries, as well as setting the style.
Cremona groupIn algebraic geometry, the Cremona group, introduced by , is the group of birational automorphisms of the -dimensional projective space over a field . It is denoted by or or . The Cremona group is naturally identified with the automorphism group of the field of the rational functions in indeterminates over , or in other words a pure transcendental extension of , with transcendence degree . The projective general linear group of order , of projective transformations, is contained in the Cremona group of order .
Irreducible componentIn algebraic geometry, an irreducible algebraic set or irreducible variety is an algebraic set that cannot be written as the union of two proper algebraic subsets. An irreducible component is an algebraic subset that is irreducible and maximal (for set inclusion) for this property. For example, the set of solutions of the equation xy = 0 is not irreducible, and its irreducible components are the two lines of equations x = 0 and y =0.
Ruled surfaceIn geometry, a surface S is ruled (also called a scroll) if through every point of S there is a straight line that lies on S. Examples include the plane, the lateral surface of a cylinder or cone, a conical surface with elliptical directrix, the right conoid, the helicoid, and the tangent developable of a smooth curve in space. A ruled surface can be described as the set of points swept by a moving straight line. For example, a cone is formed by keeping one point of a line fixed whilst moving another point along a circle.
Rational surfaceIn algebraic geometry, a branch of mathematics, a rational surface is a surface birationally equivalent to the projective plane, or in other words a rational variety of dimension two. Rational surfaces are the simplest of the 10 or so classes of surface in the Enriques–Kodaira classification of complex surfaces, and were the first surfaces to be investigated. Every non-singular rational surface can be obtained by repeatedly blowing up a minimal rational surface.
Contraction morphismIn algebraic geometry, a contraction morphism is a surjective projective morphism between normal projective varieties (or projective schemes) such that or, equivalently, the geometric fibers are all connected (Zariski's connectedness theorem). It is also commonly called an algebraic fiber space, as it is an analog of a fiber space in algebraic topology. By the Stein factorization, any surjective projective morphism is a contraction morphism followed by a finite morphism. Examples include ruled surfaces and Mori fiber spaces.
