We study the existence of Artin–Schreier curves with large a‑number. We show that Artin–Schreier curves with large a‑number can be written in certain forms and discuss their supersingularity. We also give a basis of the de Rham cohomology of Artin–Schreier curves. By computing the rank of the Hasse–Witt matrix of the curve, we also give bounds on the a‑number of trigonal curves of genus 5 in small characteristic.

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.

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In this note, we give a list of Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in weighted projective 4-spaces with the property that a hypersurface contains naturally a pencil of K3 variety. For completeness we also obtain a similar list in the case K3 hypersurfaces in weighted projective 3-spaces. The first list significantly enlarges the list of K3-fibrations of\KlemmLercheMayr~ which has been obtained on some assumptions on the weights. Our lists are expected to correspond to examples of the so-called heterotic-type II duality\KachruVafa\KachruSilverstein.

Spin polynomial invariants, as denned by Pidstrigatch and Tyurin, are used to define differentiable invariants for Dolgachev surfaces. In order to define and compute these invariants, some machinery is developed to study the wall structure for Spin polynomials, to deal with the fact that the moduli spaces have the wrong dimension and to handle nonreduced structures. The invariants are then computed.