On Nonrational Fibers of del Pezzo Fibrations over Curves

Abstract

We consider threefold del Pezzo fibrations over a curve germ whose central fiber is nonrational. Under the additional assumption that the singularities of the total space are at worst ordinary double points, we apply a suitable base change and show that there is a one-to-one correspondence between such fibrations and certain nonsingular del Pezzo fibrations equipped with a cyclic group action.