A una superficie proyectiva X cualquiera se le pueden asociar una serie de conos convexos (cono de curvas, cono semiamplio y cono característico) que proporcionan información sobre la geometría de la superficie. En esta memoria se hace un estudio del cono de curvas asociado a una superficie proyectiva racional y regular. Más concretamente, se establecen condiciones que implican la poliedricidad de dicho cono. Estas condiciones son de dos tipos: unas que dependen de la existencia de determinados divisores efectivos, y otras que dependen únicamente de la obtención de la superficie a partir de una superficie relativamente minimal (que puede ser el plano proyectivo o una superficie de Hirzebruch). La poliedricidad del cono de curvas tiene importantes implicaciones geométricas, como el hecho de que el número de morfismos proyectivos con fibras conexas de X a otra variedad (contracciones) es finito, y también que el número de (-1)-curvas de X (es decir, de curvas no singulares, racionales y de auto-intersección ­1) es finito.

Esta memoria pretende contribuir al estudio de las singularidades de los gérmenes de curva alabeada en los tres aspectos siguientes:(A) Propiedades de los gérmenes de curva que quedan determinadas por una de sus truncaciones.(B) Existencia de esquemas que parametrizan gérmenes de curva, o truncaciones de gérmenes, con ciertos invariantes prefijados.(C) Número de ecuaciones requeridas por un germen de curva y su relación con las propiedades del germen.

Dados un ideal I de un anillo Noetheriano R y un sistema multiplicativo S de R, se establecen tres tipos de caracterizaciones para la equivalencia; la equivalencia lineal, y la igualdad entre las filtraciones I-adica, (S)-simbólica y entera asociadas a I y a S: 1) Caracterizaciones topológicas, a partir de resultados generales de comparación de topologías definidas por filtraciones arbitrarias. 2) Mediante desigualdades entre alturas, dispersiones analíticas y dimensiones. 3) Caracterizaciones homológicas, en términos de la anulación de ciertos morfismos naturales entre grupos O-ésimos de cohomología local y functores EXT, y también en términos de anulación de ciertos grupos I-ésimos de cohomología local respecto I. Estos resultados se aplican al estudio de propiedades de finitud del algebra de Rees (S)-simbólica asociada a I, y a la determinación de que propiedades del anillo graduado asociado a I reflejan un buen comportamiento de las potencias (S)-simbólicas de I.

The original interest in sandwiched singularities comes from a natural question posed by J. Nash in the early sixties to H. Hironaka: “Does a finite succession of Nash transformations or normalized Nash transformations resolve the singularities of a reduced algebraic variety?” In 1975, A. Nobile proved that, in characteristic zero, a Nash transformation is an isomorphism only in case the original variety is already non-singular. It turns out, in particular, that curve singularities are resolved by a succession of Nash transformations. Rebasoo proved in his Ph. D. thesis that Nash transformations also resolve certain kinds of quasi-homogeneous hypersurface singularities in (C)3. In 1982, G. Gonzalez-Sprinberg proved that normalized Nash transformations resolve rational double points and cyclic quotients singularities of surfaces. Then, H. Hironaka proved that after a finite succession of normalized Nash transformations one obtains a surface “X” which birationally dominates a non-singular surface. By definition, the singularities of “X” are sandwiched singularities. Some years later, M. Spivakovsky proves that sandwiched singularities are resolved by normalized Nash transformations, thus giving a positive answer to the original question posed by Nash for the case of surfaces over C. Since then, a constant interest in sandwiched singularities has been shown, and they have been deeply studied from the point of view of deformation theory by de Jong and van Straten, and also by Stolen and Mohring. Sandwiched singularities have been also studied as a nice testing ground for the Nash and the wedge Problem by Lejeune-Jalabert and Reguera, where the main idea is to extend combinatorial arguments for toric surface singularities to sandwiched ones. Sandwiched singularities are the singularities obtained by blowing-up a complete ideal in the local ring of a regular point on a surface. They are rational surface singularities (roughly speaking, isolated singularities whose resolution has no effect on the arithmetic genus of the surface) and among them are included all cyclic quotients and minimal surface singularities. Sandwiched singularities are Cohen-Macaulay, but are not complete intersections and in general, there are no simple equations for them. The purpose of this memoir is to study sandwiched singularities through their relationship to the infinitely near base points of the complete ideals blownup to obtain them. Now, we briefly summarize the main contents of each one of the chapters. Chapter I is of preliminary nature and gives references to the literature for proofs. Concepts and well-known facts about infinitely near points, weighted clusters, complete ideals and rational and sandwiched surface singularities are reviewed and some consequences that are needed in the memoir are derived. In Chapter II we establish the main link between the study of sandwiched singularities and the theory of Enriques diagrams of weighted clusters and we derive some results on sandwiched singularities by using the unloading procedure. Chapter III deals essentially with the principality of divisors going through a sandwiched singularity. It is well known that Wei divisors going through a singularity (X, Q) are not Cartier divisors in general. In Chapter IV we use the results of Chapter III to explore the connection between the ideal sheaves on “X” with finite cosupport contained in the exceptional locus and the complete m(o)-primary ideals in R. Chapter V is devoted to derive consequences related to the Nash conjecture of arcs for sandwiched singularities. In Appendix A, we provide the listings of three programs in language C implementing some of the algorithms proposed. These programs have been used to compute some of the examples presented throughout the memoir. Part of the results of this thesis has been published or will be published in: • J. Fernandez-Sanchez, On sandwiched singularities and complete ideals, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 185 (2003), no. 1-3, 165-175. [19] • J. Fernandez-Sanchez, Nash families of smooth arcs on a sandwiched singularity, To appear in Math. Proc. Cambridge. Philos. Soc. [18] • J. Fernandez-Sanchez, Equivalence of the Nash conjecture for primitive and sandwiched singularities, To appear in Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. [17]

The aim of this work is to study the ring-theoretic properties of the diagonals of a Rees algebra, which from a geometric point of view are the homogenous coordinate rings of embeddings of blow-ups of projective varieties along a subvariety. First we are going to introduce the subject and the main problems. After that we shall review the known results about these problems, and finally we will give a summary of the contents and results obtained in this work. / L’objectiu d’aquesta memòria és l’estudi de les propietats aritmètiques de les diagonals d’una àlgebra de Rees o, des d’un punt de vista geomètric, dels anells de coordenades homogenis d’immersions d’explosions de varietats projectives al llarg d’una subvarietat. En primer lloc, anem a introduir el tema i els principals problemes que tractarem. A continuació, exposarem els resultats coneguts sobre aquests problemes i finalment farem un resum dels resultats obtinguts en aquesta memòria.

The main purpose of this thesis is to apply the modular approach to Diophantine equations to study some Fermat-type equations of signature (r; r; p) with r >/= 5 a fixed prime and “p” varying. In particular, we will study equations of the form x(r) + y(r) = Cz(p), where C is an integer divisible only by primes “q” is non-identical to 1; 0 (mod “r”) and obtain explicit arithmetic results for “r” = 5, 7, 13. We start with equations of the form x(5) + y(5) = Cz(p). Firstly, we attach two Frey curves E; F defined over Q(square root 5) to putative solutions of the equation. Then by using the work of J. Quer on embedding problems and on abelian varieties attached to Q-curves we prove that the p-adic Galois representations attached to E, F can be extended to p-adic representations E), (F) of Gal(Q=Q). Finally, we apply Serre's conjecture to the residual representations  (E), (F) and using Siksek's multi-Frey technique we conclude that the initial solution can not exist. We also describe a general method for attacking infinitely many equations of the form x(r) + y(r) = Cz(p) for all r>/= 7. The method makes use of elliptic curves over totally real fields, modularity and irreducibility results for representations attached to elliptic curves and level lowering theorems for Hilbert modular forms. Indeed, for each fixed “r” we produce several Frey curves defined over K+, the maximal totally real subfield of Q(xi-r). Moreover, if “r” is of the form 6k + 1 we prove the existence of a Frey curve defined over K(0) the subfield of K(+) of degree k. We prove also an irreducibility result for the mod “p” representations attached to certain elliptic curves and a modularity statement for elliptic curves over totally real abelian number fields satisfying some local conditions at 3. Finally, for r = 7 and r = 13 we are able to compute the required spaces of (Hilbert) newforms and by applying our general methods we obtain explicit arithmetic results for equations of signature (7; 7; p) and (13; 13; p). We end by providing two more Frey k-curves (a generalization of Q-curve), where “k” is a certain subfield of K(+), when “r” is a fixed prime of the form 4m+1. / En esta tesis, utilizaremos el método modular para profundizar en el estudio de las ecuaciones de tipo (r; r; p) para r un primo fijado. Empezamos por utilizar la teoría de J. Quer sobre variedades abelianas asociadas con Q-curvas y embedding problems para producir dos curvas de Frey asociadas con hipotéticas soluciones de infinitas ecuaciones de tipo (5; 5; p). Después, utilizando la conjetura de Serre y el método multi-Frey de Siksek demostraremos que las hipotéticas soluciones no pueden existir. Describiremos también un método general que nos permite atacar un número infinito de ecuaciones de tipo (r; r; p) para cada primo “r” mayor o igual que 7. El método hace uso de curvas elípticas sobre cuerpos de números, teoremas de modularidad, teoremas de bajada de nivel y formas modulares de Hilbert. Además, para ecuaciones de tipo (7; 7; p) y (13; 13; p) calcularemos los espacios de formas modulares relevantes y demostraremos que una familia infinita de ecuaciones no admite cierto tipo de soluciones. Además, demostraremos un nuevo teorema de modularidad para curvas elípticas sobre cuerpos totalmente reales abelianos. Finalmente, para primos congruentes con 1 módulo 4 propondremos dos curvas de Frey más. Demostraremos que son “k-curves” (una generalización de Q-curva) y también que satisfacen las propiedades necesarias para que pueda ser útiles en la aplicación del método modular.

In the present work, we analyse the categories of mixed Hodge complexes and mixed Hodge diagrams of differential graded algebras in these two directions: we prove the existence of both a Cartan-Eilenberg structure, via the construction of cofibrant minimal models, and a cohomological descent structure. This allows to interpret the results of Deligne, Beilinson, Morgan and Navarro within a common homotopical framework. In the additive context of mixed Hodge complexes we recover Beilinson's results. In our study we go a little further and show that the homotopy category of mixed Hodge complexes, and the derived category of mixed Hodge structures are equivalent to a third category whose objects are graded mixed Hodge structures and whose morphisms are certain homotopy classes, which are easier to manipulate. In particular, we obtain a description of the morphisms in the homotopy category in terms of morphisms and extensions of mixed Hodge structures, and recover the results of Carlson [Car80] in this area. As for the multiplicative analogue, we show that every mixed Hodge diagram can be represented by a mixed Hodge algebra which is Sullivan minimal, and establish a multiplicative version of Beilinson's Theorem. This provides an alternative to Morgan's construction. The main difference between the two approaches is that Morgan uses ad hoc constructions of models à la Sullivan, specially designed for mixed Hodge theory, while we follow the line of Quillen's model categories or Cartan-Eilenberg categories, in which the main results are expressed in terms of equivalences of homotopy categories, and the existence of certain derived functors. In particular, we obtain not only a description of mixed Hodge diagrams in terms of Sullivan minimal algebras, but we also have a description of the morphisms in the homotopy category in terms of certain homotopy classes, parallel to the additive case. In addition, our approach generalizes to broader settings, such as the study of compactificable analytic spaces, for which the Hodge and weight filtrations can be defined, but do not satisfy the properties of mixed Hodge theory. Combining these results with Navarro's functorial construction of mixed Hodge diagrams, and using the cohomological descent structure defined via the Thom-Whitney simple, we obtain a more precise and alternative proof of that the rational homotopy type, and the rational homotopy groups of every simply connected complex algebraic variety inherit functorial mixed Hodge structures. As an application, and extending the Formality Theorem of Deligne-Griffiths-Morgan-Sullivan for compact Kähler varieties and the results of Morgan for open smooth varieties, we prove that every simply connected complex algebraic variety (possibly open and singular) and every morphism between such varieties is filtered formal: its rational homotopy type is entirely determined by the first term of the spectral sequence associated with the multiplicative weight filtration. / En aquest treball, analitzem les categories de complexos de Hodge mixtos i de diagrames de Hodge d'àlgebres diferencials graduades en aquestes dues direccions: provem l'existència d'una estructura de Cartan-Eilenberg, via la construcció de models cofibrants minimals, i d'una estructura de descens cohomològic. Aquest estudi permet interpretar els resultats de Deligne, Beilinson, Morgan i Navarro en un marc homotòpic comú.