On non-rational fibers of del Pezzo fibrations over curves

Abstract

We consider threefold del Pezzo fibrations over a curve germ whose central fiber is non-rational. 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 1-to-1 correpspondence between such fibrations and certain non-singular del Pezzo fibrations equipped with a cyclic group action.