Stable Rationality of Cyclic Covers of Projective Spaces

Abstract

AbstractThe main aim of this paper is to show that a cyclic cover of ℙn branched along a very general divisor of degree d is not stably rational, provided that n ≥ 3 and d ≥ n + 1. This generalizes the result of Colliot-Thélène and Pirutka. Generalizations for cyclic covers over complete intersections and applications to suitable Fano manifolds are also discussed.