Birationally rigid iterated Fano double covers

Abstract

Iterating the procedure of making a double cover over a given variety, we construct large families of smooth higher-dimensional Fano varieties of index 1. These varieties can be realized as complete intersections in various weighted projective spaces. A generic variety in these families is proved to be birationally superrigid; in particular, it admits no non-trivial structures of a fibration into rationally connected (or uniruled) varieties, it is non-rational and its groups of birational and biregular self-maps coincide.