Birational geometry (nonfiction)

The circle is birationally equivalent to the line. One birational map between them is a stereographic projection onto the z=0 plane, pictured here.

In mathematics, birational geometry is a field of algebraic geometry in which the goal is to determine when two algebraic varieties are isomorphic outside lower-dimensional subsets. This amounts to studying mappings that are given by rational functions rather than polynomials; the map may fail to be defined where the rational functions have poles.

Birational maps

A rational map from one variety (understood to be irreducible) X to another variety Y, written as a dashed arrow X ⇢ Y, is defined as a morphism from a nonempty open subset U of X to Y. By definition of the Zariski topology used in algebraic geometry, a nonempty open subset U is always the complement of a lower-dimensional subset of X. Concretely, a rational map can be written in coordinates using rational functions.

A birational map from X to Y is a rational map f: X ⇢ Y such that there is a rational map Y ⇢ X inverse to f. A birational map induces an isomorphism from a nonempty open subset of X to a nonempty open subset of Y. In this case, X and Y are said to be birational, or birationally equivalent. In algebraic terms, two varieties over a field k are birational if and only if their function fields are isomorphic as extension fields of k.

A special case is a birational morphism f: X → Y, meaning a morphism which is birational. That is, f is defined everywhere, but its inverse may not be. Typically, this happens because a birational morphism contracts some subvarieties of X to points in Y.

A variety X is said to be rational if it is birational to affine space (or equivalently, to projective space) of some dimension. Rationality is a very natural property: it means that X minus some lower-dimensional subset can be identified with affine space minus some lower-dimensional subset.

Fiction cross-reference

• Crimes against mathematical constants
• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles
• Mathematician
• Mathematics

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Algebraic geometry (nonfiction)
• Mathematics (nonfiction)
• Stereographic projection (nonfiction)

External links:

• Number theory @ Wikipedia