The failure of Kodaira vanishing for Fano varieties, and terminal singularities that are not Cohen-Macaulay

Abstract

We show that the Kodaira vanishing theorem can fail on smooth Fano varieties of any characteristic p > 0. Taking cones over some of these varieties, we give the first examples of terminal singularities which are not Cohen-Macaulay. By a different method, we construct a terminal singularity of dimension 3 (the lowest possible) in characteristic 2 which is not Cohen-Macaulay.