Symmetries of Fano varieties

Abstract

Prokhorov and Shramov proved that the BAB conjecture, which Birkar later proved, implies the uniform Jordan property for automorphism groups of complex Fano varieties of fixed dimension. This property in particular gives an upper bound on the size of finite semi-simple groups (i.e., those with no nontrivial normal abelian subgroups) acting faithfully on 𝑛-dimensional complex Fano varieties, and this bound only depends on 𝑛. We investigate the geometric consequences of an action by a certain semi-simple group: the symmetric group. We give an effective upper bound for the maximal symmetric group action on an 𝑛-dimensional Fano variety. For certain classes of varieties – toric varieties and Fano weighted complete intersections – we obtain optimal upper bounds. Finally, we draw a connection between large symmetric actions and boundedness of varieties, by showing that the maximally symmetric Fano fourfolds form a bounded family. Along the way, we also show analogues of some of our results for Calabi–Yau varieties and log terminal singularities.