‘(Non)Rationality of hypersurfaces’

There has been recent progress in the question of which unirational hypersurfaces are rational. Classical results, going back to Clemens, Griffiths, Manin et al, show e.g. that smooth cubic and quartic hypersurfaces in P4 are not rational. Already in dimension four the situation is more difficult, e.g. no smooth cubic in P5 is known to be non-rational. In particular we would like to understand new techniques involving torsion in the Chow group originated by Voisin. The program and in particular the dates are provisional. For further information or if you want to give a talk in the seminar, please contact one of us huybrech @ or schreied@