Affine-ruled varieties without the Laurent cancellation property

Abstract

We describe a method to construct hypersurfaces of the complex affine $n$-space with isomorphic $\mathbb{C}^*$-cylinders. Among these hypersurfaces, we find new explicit counterexamples to the Laurent Cancellation Problem, i.e. hypersurfaces that are non isomorphic, although their $\mathbb{C}^*$-cylinders are isomorphic as abstract algebraic varieties. We also provide examples of non isomorphic varieties $X$ and $Y$ with isomorphic cartesian squares $X\times X$ and $Y\times Y$.