Proof of Miyanishi's conjecture on endomorphisms of varieties

Abstract

If $X$ is a quasi-projective variety over a field $k$ and $\varphi$ a birational endomorphism of $X$ that is injective outside a closed subset of codimension $\ge 2$, we prove that $\varphi$ is an automorphism. This generalizes an old theorem of Ax and proves a conjecture of Miyanishi. A key step in our proof is a finiteness result on class groups, which is of interest in its own right.