Abstract:
One of the main problems of birational geometry is the
classification of algebraic varieties up to birational
equivalence. Refining this problem, one can classify algebraic
varieties with additional structure, for example, by considering
varieties with a fixed (meromorphic) volume form. In this case, it
is natural to consider volume forms that have poles of at most first
order. The group of equivalence classes of varieties with such a
form is called the Burnside group. This group is good because some
natural invariants of birational maps preserving the volume form on
a given variety take values in it. We will define and study these
invariants (sometimes called "motivic invariants") for groups of
birational automorphisms of a projective space with a "standard"
toric-invariant form. We will show that such groups are not simple
in any dimension starting from four, and also that they cannot be
generated by pseudo-regularizable elements. This result can be seen
as a generalization of a similar theorem for the classical Cremona
group, that is, the group of birational automorphisms of the
projective space.