Powersum varieties, also called varieties of sums of powers, have provided examples of interesting relations between varieties since their first appearance in the 19th century. One of the most useful tools to study them is apolarity, a notion originally related to the action of differential operators on the polynomial ring. In this work, we make explicit how one can see apolarity in terms of the Cox ring of a variety. In this way, powersum varieties are a special case of varieties of apolar schemes; we explicitly describe examples of such varieties in the case of two toric surfaces, when the Cox ring is particularly well-behaved.

As a continuation of\lianyaufour, we study modular properties of the periods, the mirror maps and Yukawa couplings for multi-moduli Calabi-Yau varieties. In Part A of this paper, motivated by the recent work of Kachru-Vafa, we degenerate a three-moduli family of Calabi-Yau toric varieties along a codimension one subfamily which can be described by the vanishing of certain Mori coordinate, corresponding to going to the``large volume limit''in a certain direction. Then we see that the deformation space of the subfamily is the same as a certain family of K3 toric surfaces. This family can in turn be studied by further degeneration along a subfamily which in the end is described by a family of elliptic curves. The periods of the K3 family (and hence the original Calabi-Yau family) can be described by the squares of the periods of the elliptic curves. The consequences include:(1) proofs of various conjectural formulas of physicists\vk\lkm involving mirror maps and modular functions;(2) new identities involving multi-variable hypergeometric series and modular functions--generalizing\lianyaufour. In Part B, we study for two-moduli families the perturbation series of the mirror map and the type A Yukawa couplings near certain large volume limits. Our main tool is a new class of polynomial PDEs associated with Fuchsian PDE systems. We derive the first few terms in the perturbation series. For the case of degree 12 hypersurfaces in\P^ 4 [6, 2, 2, 1, 1], in one limit the series of the couplings are expressed in terms of the j function. In another limit, they are expressed in terms of rational functions. The latter give explicit formulas for infinite sequences of``instanton

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We study rationality properties of quadric surface bundles over the projective plane. We exhibit families of smooth projective complex fourfolds of this type over connected bases, containing both rational and non-rational fibers.

A method of constructing Cohomological Field Theories (CohFTs) with unit using minimal classes on the moduli spaces of curves is developed. As a simple consequence, CohFTs with unit are found which take values outside of the tautological cohomology of the moduli spaces of curves. A study of minimal classes in low genus is presented in the Appendix by D. Petersen.

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We present a new method to solve certain ar {\partial} -equations for logarithmic differential forms by using harmonic integral theory for currents on Kahler manifolds. The result can be considered as a ar {\partial} -lemma for logarithmic forms. As applications, we generalize the result of Deligne about closedness of logarithmic forms, give geometric and simpler proofs of Deligne's degeneracy theorem for the logarithmic Hodge to de Rham spectral sequences at ar {\partial} -level, as well as certain injectivity theorem on compact Kahler manifolds.

Theorem 1. Let D be an irreducible bounded symmetric domain in C', n>= 2. Let F be a (nonuniform) lattice in Aut (D), ie a discrete subgroup of Aut (D) for which N:= D/F (is noncompact and) has. finite volume (wrt the locally symmetric metric induced from D). Suppose that a group F isomorphic to F (as an abstract group) acts as a discrete automorphism group on a contractible K (ihler manifold tVI. Assume that lQ/f has a finite singularity free cover M (ie M is a manifold) which is quasiprojective ie admits a compactification as a projective variety IVI and that~ I\M is of codimension at least three in~ l. Then] Q is biholomorphically equivalent to D, and f is conjugate to F in Aut (D).

This volume contains the written account of the Bonn seminar on arith-metic geometry 2003/2004. It gives a coherent exposition of the theory of intersections of modular correspondences. The focus of the seminar is the formula for the intersection number of arithmetic modular correspondences due to Gross and Keating. Other topics treated are Hurwitz's theorem on the intersection of modular correspondences over the field of complex numbers, and the relation of the arithmetic intersection numbers to Fourier coefficients of Siegel-Eisenstein series. Also included is background material on one-dimensional formal groups and their endomorphisms, and on quadratic forms over the ring of p-adic integers.