On the genus of birational maps between 3-folds

Abstract

In this note we present two equivalent definitions for the genus of a birational map X --> Y between smooth complex projective 3-folds. The first one is the definition introduced in 1973 by M. A. Frumkin, the second one was recently suggested to me by S. Cantat. By focusing first on proving that these two definitions are equivalent, one can obtain all the results of the paper of Frumkin in a much shorter way. In particular, the genus of an automorphism of $\mathbb{C}^3$, view as a birational self-map of the projective space, will easily be proved to be 0.