The main focus of this volume is on the problem of describing the automorphism groups of affine and projective varieties, a classical subject in algebraic geometry where, in both cases, the automorphism group is often infinite dimensional. The collection covers a wide range of topics and is intended for researchers in the fields of classical algebraic geometry and birational geometry (Cremona groups) as well as affine geometry with an emphasis on algebraic group actions and automorphism groups. It presents original research and surveys and provides a valuable overview of the current state of the art in these topics. Bringing together specialists from projective, birational algebraic geometry and affine and complex algebraic geometry, including Mori theory and algebraic group actions, this book is the result of ensuing talks and discussions from the conference "Groups of Automorphisms in Birational and Affine Geometry" held in October 2012, at the CIRM, Levico Terme, Italy. The talks at the conference highlighted the close connections between the above-mentioned areas and promoted the exchange of knowledge and methods from adjacent fields.

Algebraic varieties are shapes defined by polynomial equations. Smooth Fano threefolds are a fundamental subclass that can be thought of as higher-dimensional generalizations of ordinary spheres. They belong to 105 irreducible deformation families. This book determines whether the general element of each family admits a Kähler–Einstein metric (and for many families, for all elements), addressing a question going back to Calabi 70 years ago. The book's solution exploits the relation between these metrics and the algebraic notion of K-stability. Moreover, the book presents many different techniques to prove the existence of a Kähler–Einstein metric, containing many additional relevant results such as the classification of all Kähler–Einstein smooth Fano threefolds with infinite automorphism groups and computations of delta-invariants of all smooth del Pezzo surfaces. This book will be essential reading for researchers and graduate students working on algebraic geometry and complex geometry.

Cremona Groups and the Icosahedron focuses on the Cremona groups of ranks 2 and 3 and describes the beautiful appearances of the icosahedral group A5 in them. The book surveys known facts about surfaces with an action of A5, explores A5-equivariant geometry of the quintic del Pezzo threefold V5, and gives a proof of its A5-birational rigidity. The authors explicitly describe many interesting A5-invariant subvarieties of V5, including A5-orbits, low-degree curves, invariant anticanonical K3 surfaces, and a mildly singular surface of general type that is a degree five cover of the diagonal Clebsch cubic surface. They also present two birational selfmaps of V5 that commute with A5-action and use them to determine the whole group of A5-birational automorphisms. As a result of this study, they produce three non-conjugate icosahedral subgroups in the Cremona group of rank 3, one of them arising from the threefold V5. This book presents up-to-date tools for studying birational geometry of higher-dimensional varieties. In particular, it provides readers with a deep understanding of the biregular and birational geometry of V5.

This book collects the proceedings of a series of conferences dedicated to birational geometry of Fano varieties held in Moscow, Shanghai and Pohang The conferences were focused on the following two related problems: * existence of Kahler-Einstein metrics on Fano varieties * degenerations of Fano varieties on which two famous conjectures were recently proved. The first is the famous Borisov-Alexeev-Borisov Conjecture on the boundedness of Fano varieties, proved by Caucher Birkar (for which he was awarded the Fields medal in 2018), and the second one is the (arguably even more famous) Tian-Yau-Donaldson Conjecture on the existence of Kahler-Einstein metrics on (smooth) Fano varieties and K-stability, which was proved by Xiuxiong Chen, Sir Simon Donaldson and Song Sun. The solutions for these longstanding conjectures have opened new directions in birational and Kahler geometries. These research directions generated new interesting mathematical problems, attracting the attention of mathematicians worldwide. These conferences brought together top researchers in both fields (birational geometry and complex geometry) to solve some of these problems and understand the relations between them. The result of this activity is collected in this book, which contains contributions by sixty nine mathematicians, who contributed forty three research and survey papers to this volume. Many of them were participants of the Moscow-Shanghai-Pohang conferences, while the others helped to expand the research breadth of the volume - the diversity of their contributions reflects the vitality of modern Algebraic Geometry.