Birational geometry of Fano direct products

Aleksandr V. Pukhlikov

Published 2004-05-01, updated 2004-08-26Version 2

We prove birational superrigidity of direct products $V=F_1\times...\times F_K$ of primitive Fano varieties of the following two types: either $F_i\subset{\mathbb P}^M$ is a general hypersurface of degree $M$, $M\geq 6$, or $F_i\stackrel{\sigma}{\to}{\mathbb P}^M$ is a general double space of index 1, $M\geq 3$. In particular, each structure of a rationally connected fiber space on $V$ is given by a projection onto a direct factor. The proof is based on the connectedness principle of Shokurov and Koll\' ar and the technique of hypertangent divisors.