Non-Archimedean volumes of metrized nef line bundles

Abstract

Let $L$ be a line bundle on a proper, geometrically reduced scheme $X$ over a non-trivially valued non-Archimedean field $K$. Roughly speaking, the non-Archimedean volume of a continuous metric on the Berkovich analytification of $L$ measures the asymptotic growth of the space of small sections of tensor powers of $L$. For a continuous semipositive metric on $L$ in the sense of Zhang, we show first that the non-Archimedean volume agrees with the energy. The existence of such a semipositive metric yields that $L$ is nef. A second result is that the non-Archimedean volume is differentiable at any semipositive continuous metric. These results are known when $L$ is ample, and the purpose of this paper is to generalize them to the nef case. The method is based on a detailed study of the content and the volume of a finitely presented torsion module over the (possibly non-noetherian) valuation ring of $K$.