Period mappings were introduced in the sixties [G] to study variation of complex structures of families of algebraic varieties. The theory of tautological systems was introduced recently [LSY,LY] to understand period integrals of algebraic manifolds. In this paper, we give an explicit construction of a tautological system for each component of a period mapping.

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We prove an addition formula for Jacobi functions $$\varphi _\lambda ^{\left( {\alpha ,\beta } \right)} \left( {\alpha \geqq \beta \geqq - \tfrac{1}{2}} \right)$$ analogous to the known addition formula for Jacobi polynomials. We exploit the positivity of the coefficients in the addition formula by giving the following application. We prove that the product of two Jacobi functions of the same argument has a nonnegative Fourier-Jacobi transform. This implies that the convolution structure associated to the inverse Fourier-Jacobi transform is positive.

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.