Klt varieties of conjecturally minimal volume

Abstract: We construct klt projective varieties with ample canonical class and the smallest known volume. We also find exceptional klt Fano varieties with the smallest known anticanonical volume. We conjecture that our examples have the smallest volume in every dimension, and we give low-dimensional evidence for that. In order to improve on earlier examples, we are forced to consider weighted hypersurfaces that are not quasi-smooth. We show that our Fano varieties are exceptional by computing their global log canonical threshold (or $\alpha$-invariant) exactly; it is extremely large, roughly $2^{2^n}$ in dimension $n$. These examples give improved lower bounds in Birkar's theorem on boundedness of complements for Fano varieties.