The purpose of this paper is to translate positivity properties of the tangent bundle (and the anti-canonical bundle) of an algebraic manifold into existence and movability properties of rational curves and to investigate the impact on the global geometry of the manifold $X$. Among the results we prove are these:
\quad If $X$ is a projective manifold, and ${\cal E} \subset T_X$ is an ample locally free sheaf with $n-2\ge rk {\cal E}\ge n$, then $X \simeq \EP_n$.
\quad Let $X$ be a projective manifold. If $X$ is rationally connected, then there exists a free $T_X$-ample family of (rational) curves. If $X$ admits a free $T_X$-ample family of curves, then $X$ is rationally generated.
We present a self-contained combinatorial approach to Fujita's conjectures in the toric case. Our main new result is a generalization of Fujita's very ampleness conjecture for toric varieties with arbitrary singularities. In an appendix, we use similar methods to give a new proof of an analogous toric generalization of Fujita's freeness conjecture due to Fujino.
In the article "Submanifold of abelian varieties", A.J. Sommese proved that direct sum and tensor product of two vector bundles $E$ and $F$ over a smooth projective variety are $k$-ample if $E$ and $F$ are $k$-ample and are generated by global sections. Here we show that the latter condition is not needed.
Jet ampleness of line bundles generalizes very ampleness by requiring the existence of enough global sections to separate not just points and tangent vectors, but also their higher order analogues called jets. We give sharp bounds guaranteeing that a line bundle on a projective toric variety is $k$-jet ample in terms of its intersection numbers with the invariant curves, in terms of the lattice lengths of the edges of its polytope, in terms of the higher concavity of its piecewise linear function and in terms of its Seshadri constant. For example, the tensor power $k+n-2$ of an ample line bund…
Let X be a projective variety which is algebraic Lang hyperbolic. We show that Lang's conjecture holds (one direction only): X and all its subvarieties are of general type and the canonical divisor K_X is ample at smooth points and Kawamata log terminal points of X, provided that K_X is Q-Cartier, no Calabi-Yau variety is algebraic Lang hyperbolic and a weak abundance conjecture holds.
In this paper, using Klyachko's classification theorem we study positivity and semi-stability of toric vector bundles on a class of nonsingular projective toric varieties, known as Bott towers. In particular, we give a criterion of $s$-jet ampleness of line bundles and characterize nef and big line bundles on Bott towers using Bott numbers. We obtain a criterion for the ampleness of discriminant zero semi-stable toric vector bundles on nonsingular projective varieties. We also describe toric subbundles of toric vector bundles on nonsingular toric varieties.
We prove a strengthening of Kollár's Ampleness Lemma and use it to prove that any proper coarse moduli space of stable log-varieties of general type is projective. We also prove subadditivity of log-Kodaira dimension for fiber spaces whose general fiber is of log general type.
We systematically study the splitting of vector bundles on a smooth, projective variety, whose restriction to the zero locus of a regular section of an ample vector bundle splits. First, we find ampleness and genericity conditions which ensure that the splitting of the vector bundle along the subvariety implies its global splitting. Second, we obtain a simple splitting criterion for vector bundles on the Grassmannian and on partial flag varieties.
Let $\mathcal X$ be a projective arithmetic variety of dimension at least $2$. If $\overline{\mathcal L}$ is an ample hermitian line bundle on $\mathcal X$, we prove that the proportion of those effective sections of $\overline{\mathcal L}^{\otimes n}$ that define an irreducible divisor on $\mathcal X$ tends to $1$ as $n$ tends to $\infty$. We prove variants of this statement for schemes mapping to such an $\mathcal X$. On the way to these results, we discuss some general properties of arithmetic ampleness, including restriction theorems, and upper bounds for the number of effective sections o…
In this article we prove new results on projective normality and normal presentation of adjunction bundle associated to an ample and globally generated line bundle on higher dimensional smooth projective varieties with nef canonical bundle. As one of the consequences of the main theorem, we give bounds on very ampleness and projective normality of pluricanonical linear systems on varieties of general type in dimensions three, four and five. These improve known such results.
The goal of this article is to study the equations and syzygies of embeddings of rational surfaces and certain Fano varieties. Given a rational surface X and an ample and base-point-free line bundle L on X, we give an optimal numerical criterion for L to satisfy property Np. This criterion turns out to be a characterization of property Np if X is anticanonical. We also prove syzygy results for adjunction bundles and a Reider type theorem for higher syzygies. For certain Fano varieties we also prove results on very ampleness and higher syzygies.
In this note we study properties of partially ample line bundles on simplicial projective toric varieties. We prove that the cone of q-ample line bundles is a union of rational polyhedral cones, and calculate these cones in examples. We prove a restriction theorem for big q-ample line bundles, and deduce that q-ampleness of the anticanonical bundle is not invariant under flips. Finally we prove a Kodaira-type vanishing theorem for q-ample line bundles.
We show that infinitesimal Torelli for $n$-forms holds for abelian covers of algebraic varieties of dimension $n\ge 2$, under some explicit ampleness assumptions on the building data of the cover. Moreover, we prove a variational Torelli result for some families of abelian covers.
We give a simple combinatorial proof of the toric version of Mori's theorem that the only $n$-dimensional smooth projective varieties with ample tangent bundle are the projective spaces $\mathbb{P}^n$.
In this paper, we establish the following version at infinity of Whitney's theorem [6, 7]: Geometric and algebraic tangent cones at infinity of complex algebraic varieties coincide. The proof of this fact is based on a geometric characterization of geometric tangent cones at infinity and using the global Łojasiewicz inequality with explicit exponents for complex algebraic varieties. We also show that tangent cones at infinity of complex algebraic varieties can be computed using Gröbner bases.
I prove a crystalline characterization of abelian varieties in characteristic $p>0$ amongst the class of varieties with trivial tangent bundle. I show using my characterization that a smooth, projective, ordinary variety with trivial tangent bundle is an abelian variety if and only if its second crystalline cohomology is torsion free. I also show that a conjecture of Ke-Zheng Li about characteristic $p>0$ varieties with trivial tangent bundles is true for surfaces. I give a new proof of a result of Li and prove a refinement of it. Based on my characterization of abelian varieties I propose mod…
This paper generalises Mori's famous theorem about "Projective manifolds with ample tangent bundles" to normal projective varieties in the following way: A normal projective variety over $\mathbb{C}$ with ample tangent sheaf is isomorphic to the complex projective space.
Recently, Kanemitsu has discovered a counterexample to the long-standing conjecture that the tangent bundle of a Fano manifold of Picard number one is (semi)stable. His counterexample is a smooth horospherical variety. There is a weaker conjecture that the tangent bundle of a Fano manifold of Picard number one is simple. We prove that this weaker conjecture is valid for smooth horospherical varieties of Picard number one. Our proof follows from the existence of an irreducible family of unbendable rational curves whose tangent vectors span the tangent spaces of the horospherical variety at gene…
We describe the stratification by tensor rank of the points belonging to the tangent developable of any Segre variety. We give algorithms to compute the rank and a decomposition of a tensor belonging to the secant variety of lines of any Segre variety. We prove Comon's conjecture on the rank of symmetric tensors for those tensors belonging to tangential varieties to Veronese varieties.
We determine the stability/instability of the tangent bundles of the Fano varieties in a certain class of two orbit varieties, which are classified by Pasquier in 2009. As a consequence, we show that some of these varieties admit unstable tangent bundles, which disproves a conjecture on stability of tangent bundles of Fano manifolds.
We study the positivity of exterior powers of the tangent sheaf on toric varieties in order to generalize results by Campana and Peternell about 3-folds with nef second exterior power of the tangent bundle. Using the theory of equivariant vector bundles and the toric MMP, we establish in the smooth case a criterion for the positivity of $Λ^m\mathcal T_X$ in terms of wall relations. As an application, we classify smooth toric varieties of arbitrary dimension $n\ge3$ with $Λ^2\mathcal T_X$ nef and those of dimension $n\ge 4$ with $Λ^3\mathcal T_X$ ample.
Following Contou-Carrere [CC], we consider the Bott-Samelson resolution of a Schubert variety as a variety of galleries in the Tits building associated to the situation. We prove that the rational smoothness of a Schubert variety can be expressed in terms of a subspace of the Zariski tangent space called, the combinatorial tangent space. For this, we use a characterization of rational smoothness of a Schubert variety introduced by Carrell and Peterson [CP].
We prove some results on effective very ampleness and projective normality for some varieties with trivial canonical bundle. In the first part we prove an effective projective normality result for an ample line bundle on regular smooth four-folds with trivial canonical bundle. More precisely we show that for a regular smooth fourfold with trivial canonical bundle, $A^{\otimes 15}$ is projectively normal for $A$ ample. In the second part we emphasize on the projective normality of multiples of ample and globally generated line bundles on certain classes of known examples (upto deformation) of p…
For a hypersurface in a projective space, we consider the set of pairs of a point and a line in the projective space such that the line intersects the hypersurface at the point with a fixed multiplicity. We prove that this set of pairs forms a smooth variety for a general hypersurface.
We give a combinatorial criterion for the tangent bundle on a smooth toric variety to be stable with respect to a given polarisation in terms of the corresponding lattice polytope. Furthermore, we show that for a smooth toric surface and a smooth toric variety of Picard rank 2, there exists an ample line bundle with respect to which the tangent bundle is stable if and only if it is an iterated blow-up of projective space.
Let $X$ be a smooth projective variety defined over an algebraically closed field of positive characteristic $p$ whose tangent bundle is nef. We prove that $X$ admits a smooth morphism $X \to M$ such that the fibers are Fano varieties with nef tangent bundle and $T_M$ is numerically flat. We also prove that extremal contractions exist as smooth morphisms. As an application, we prove that, if the Frobenius morphism can be lifted modulo $p^2$, then $X$ admits, up to a finite étale Galois cover, a smooth morphism onto an ordinary abelian variety whose fibers are products of projective spaces.
Let $X$ be a smooth projective variety over an algebraically closed field $\mathbb{K}$ with arbitrary characteristic. Suppose $L$ is an ample and globally generated line bundle. By Castelnuovo--Mumford regularity, we show that $K_X \otimes L^{\otimes \dim X} \otimes A$ is globally generated and $K_X \otimes L^{\otimes (\dim X+1)} \otimes A$ is very ample, provided the line bundle $A$ is nef but not numerically trivial. On complex projective varieties, by investigating Kawamata-Viehweg-Nadel type vanishing theorems for vector bundles, we also obtain the global generation for adjoint vector bund…
Let $X$ be a nonsingular complex projective toric variety. We address the question of semi-stability as well as stability for the tangent bundle $T{X}$. In particular, a complete answer is given when $X$ is a Fano toric variety of dimension four with Picard number at most two, complementing earlier work of Nakagawa. We also give an infinite set of examples of Fano toric varieties for which $TX$ is unstable; the dimensions of this collection of varieties are unbounded. Our method is based on the equivariant approach initiated by Klyachko and developed further by Perling and Kool.
We propose a conjectural list of Fano manifolds of Picard number $1$ with pseudoeffective normalized tangent bundles, which we prove in various situations by relating it to the complete divisibility conjecture of Russo and Zak on varieties with small codegree. Furthermore, the pseudoeffective thresholds and hence the pseudoeffective cones of the projectivized tangent bundles of rational homogeneous spaces of Picard number $1$ are explicitly determined by studying the total dual VMRT and the geometry of stratified Mukai flops. As a by-product, we obtain sharp vanishing theorems on the global tw…
We give simple geometric proofs of Aprodu-Farkas-Papadima-Raicu-Weyman's theorem on syzygies of tangent developable surfaces of rational normal curves and Raicu-Sam's result on syzygies of K3 carpets. As a consequence, we obtain a quick proof of Green's conjecture for general curves of genus $g$ over an algebraically closed field $\mathbf{k}$ with $\operatorname{char}(\mathbf{k}) = 0$ or $\operatorname{char}(\mathbf{k}) \geq \lfloor (g-1)/2 \rfloor$. We also show the arithmetic normality of tangent developable surfaces of arbitrary smooth projective curves of large degree.
We consider tangent cones to Schubert subvarieties of the flag variety $G/B$, where $B$ is a Borel subgroup of a reductive complex algebraic group $G$ of type $E_6$, $E_7$ or $E_8$. We prove that if $w_1$ and $w_2$ form a good pair of involutions in the Weyl group $W$ of $G$ then the tangent cones $C_{w_1}$ and $C_{w_2}$ to the corresponding Schubert subvarieties of $G/B$ do not coincide as subschemes of the tangent space to $G/B$ at the neutral point.
Let $\mathcal D_{d,k}$ denote the discriminant variety of degree $d$ polynomials in one variable with at least one of its roots being of multiplicity $\geq k$. We prove that the tangent cones to $\mathcal D_{d,k}$ span $\mathcal D_{d,k-1}$ thus, revealing an extreme ruled nature of these varieties. The combinatorics of the web of affine tangent spaces to $\mathcal D_{d,k}$ in $\mathcal D_{d,k-1}$ is directly linked to the root multiplicities of the relevant polynomials. In fact, solving a polynomial equation $P(z) = 0$ turns out to be equivalent to finding hyperplanes through a given point $P(…
We determine which tangential varieties of homogeneously embedded rational homogeneous varieties are spherical. We determine the homogeneous coordinate rings and rings of covariants of the tangential varieties of homogenously embedded compact Hermitian symmetric spaces (CHSS). We give bounds on the degrees of generators of the ideals of tangential varieties of CHSS and obtain more explicit infomation about the ideals in certain cases.
This work consists of two parts. In the first part we develop new techniques to compute Koszul cohomology groups for several classes of varieties. As applications we prove results on projective normality and syzygies for algebraic surfaces. From more general results we obtain in particular the following: a) Mukai's conjecture (and stronger variants of it) regarding projective normality and normal presentation for surfaces with Kodaira dimension 0, and uniform bounds for higher syzygies associated to adjoint linear series, b) effective bounds along the lines of Mukai's conjecture regarding proj…
Let $ϕ: X \to \mathbb P^n$ be a double cover branched along a smooth hypersurface of degree $2m, 2 \leq m \leq n-1$. We study the varieties of minimal rational tangents $\mathcal C_x \subset \mathbb P T_x(X)$ at a general point $x$ of $X$. We describe the homogeneous ideal of $\mathcal C_x$ and show that the projective isomorphism type of $\mathcal C_x$ varies in a maximal way as $x$ varies over general points of $X$. Our description of the ideal of $\mathbb C_x$ implies a certain rigidity property of the covering morphism $ϕ$. As an application of this rigidity, we show that any finite morphi…
Let $G$ be a complex reductive group, $T$ be a maximal torus of $G$, $B$ be a Borel subgroup of $G$ containing $T$, $W$ be the Weyl group of $G$ with respect to $T$. To each element $w$ of $W$ one can associate the Schubert subvariety $X_w$ of the flag variety $G/B$, the tangent cone to $X_w$ at the identity point $p$ considered as a subcheme of the tangent space $T_p(G/B)$, and the reduced tangent cone to $X_w$ at $p$ considered as a subvariety of $T_p(G/B)$. Let $w_1$, $w_2$ be distinct involutions in $W$. We prove that if $G$ is of type $B_n$ or $C_n$, then the tangent cones corresponding t…
Beauville asked if a compact Kähler manifold with split tangent bundle has a universal covering that is a product of manifolds. We use Mori theory and elementary results about holomorphic foliations to study this problem for projective uniruled varieties. In particular we obtain an affirmative answer for rationally connected varieties in any dimension and uniruled varieties in dimension 4.
This survey paper discusses some of the recent progress in the study of rational curves on algebraic varieties. It was written for the survey volume of the priority programme "Global Methods in Complex Geometry", supported by the DFG. To start, we discuss existence results for rational curves on foliated manifolds. We construct the tangent morphism, define the variety of minimal rational tangents (VMRT) and name a number of results that show that many of the geometry properies of a uniruled variety are encoded in the projective geometry of the VMRT. The results are then applied in two differen…
We characterize Kaehler manifolds with trivial logarithmic tangent bundle (with respect to a divisor D) as a class of certain compatifications of complex semi-tori.
