Gromov's cancellation question in birational algebraic geometry

Abstract

Gromov's 1999 cancellation question is: given two open embeddings of a variety U into a variety X, do they always have isomorphic closed complements? In my joint work with Hsueh-Yung Lin we reformulate this question in terms of the structure of the Grothendieck ring of varieties and answer it in various situations. The answer will be positive or negative depending on the dimension of varieties and the ground field. Finally, I will present an application to the structure of the Cremona group of birational self-maps of the projective space.