arXiv subjects

Stefan Kebekus

Publications and source records attributed to Stefan Kebekus.

54 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2006

Existence of rational curves on algebraic varieties, minimal rational tangents, and applications

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 different settings. For one, we discuss the geometry of chains of rational curves on uniruled varieties, show how the length of a variety can be determined from the VMRT and discuss the concrete example of the moduli space of vector bundles on a curve. On the other hand, the existence results for rational curves can be also be used to study manifolds which are known NOT to contain rational curves. We employ this method to study deformations of morphisms. Finally, we look at families of varieties of canonically polarized manifolds over complex surfaces, and use non-existence results for rational curves on the base to relate the variation of the family with the logarithmic Kodaira dimension of the base.

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arXiv2005

Rationally connected foliations after Bogomolov and McQuillan

This paper is concerned with a sufficient criterion to guarantee that a given foliation on a normal variety has algebraic and rationally connected leaves. Following ideas from a preprint of Bogomolov-McQuillan and using recent works of Langer and Graber-Harris-Starr, we give a clean, short and simple proof of previous results. Apart from a new vanishing theorem for vector bundles in positive characteristic, our proof employs only standard techniques of Mori theory and does not make any reference to the more involved properties of foliations in characteristic p. We apply the result to show that Q-Fano varieties with unstable tangent bundles always admit a sequence of partial rational quotients naturally associated to the Harder-Narasimhan filtration.

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arXiv2005

A refinement of Stein factorization and deformations of surjective morphisms

This paper is concerned with a refinement of the Stein factorization, and with applications to the study of deformations of surjective morphisms. We show that every surjective morphism f:X->Y between normal projective varieties factors canonically via a finite cover of Y that is etale in codimension one. This "maximally etale factorization" is characterized in terms of positivity of the push-forward of the structure sheaf and satisfies a functorial property. It turns out that the maximally etale factorization is stable under deformations, and naturally decomposes an etale cover of the Hom-scheme into a torus and into deformations that are relative with respect to the rationally connected quotient of the target Y. In particular, we show that all deformations of f respect the rationally connected quotient of Y.

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arXiv2005

Holomorphic maps onto varieties of non-negative Kodaira dimension

A classical result in complex geometry says that the automorphism group of a manifold of general type is discrete. It is more generally true that there are only finitely many surjective morphisms between two fixed projective manifolds of general type. Rigidity of surjective morphisms, and the failure of a morphism to be rigid have been studied by a number of authors in the past. The main result of this paper states that surjective morphisms are always rigid, unless there is a clear geometric reason for it. More precisely, we can say the following. First, deformations of surjective morphisms between normal projective varieties are unobstructed unless the target variety is covered by rational curves. Second, if the target is not covered by rational curves, then surjective morphisms are infinitesimally rigid, unless the morphism factors via a variety with positive-dimensional automorphism group. In this case, the Hom-scheme can be completely described.

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arXiv2004

Geometry of chains of minimal rational curves

Chains of minimal degree rational curves have been used as an important tool in the study of Fano manifolds. Their own geometric properties, however, have not been studied much. The goal of the paper is to introduce an infinitesimal method to study chains of minimal rational curves via varieties of minimal rational tangents and their higher secants. For many examples of Fano manifolds this method can be used to compute the minimal length of chains needed to join two general points. One consequence of our computation is a bound on the multiplicities of divisors at a general point of the moduli of stable bundles of rank two on a curve.

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arXiv2003

Lines on contact Manifolds IIb

Let X be a complex-projective contact manifold whose second Betti-number is one. It has long been conjectured that X should then be rational-homogeneous, or equivalently, that there exists an embedding of X into a projective space whose image contains lines. Using methods introduced in math.AG/0206193, we show that X is covered by a compact family of rational curves, called "contact lines" that behave very much like the lines on the rational homogeneous examples: if x in X is a general point, then all contact lines through x are smooth, no two of them share a common tangent direction at x, and the union of all contact lines through x forms a cone over an irreducible, smooth base. As a corollary, we obtain that the tangent bundle of X is stable.

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arXiv2002

Are minimal degree rational curves determined by their tangent vectors?

Let X be a projective variety which is covered by rational curves, for instance a Fano manifold over the complex numbers. In this setup, characterization and classification problems lead to the natural question: "Given two points on X, how many minimal degree rational curve are there which contain those points?". A recent answer to this question led to a number of new results in classification theory. As an infinitesimal analogue, we ask "How many minimal degree rational curves exist which contain a prescribed tangent vector?" In this paper, we give sufficient conditions which guarantee that every tangent vector at a general point of X is contained in at most one rational curve minimal degree. As an immediate application, we obtain irreducibility criteria for the space of minimal rational curves.

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arXiv2001

Characterizing the projective space after Cho, Miyaoka and Shepherd-Barron

In this paper we give a short and elementary proof of a characterization of the projective space in terms of rational curves which was conjectured by Mori and Mukai. A proof was first given in a preprint by K. Cho, Y. Miyaoka and N. Shepherd-Barron. While our proof here is shorter and involves substantial technical simplifications, the essential ideas are taken from that preprint.

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arXiv2001

A reduction map for nef line bundles

In a recent preprint, H. Tsuji gave a number of interesting assertions on the structure of pseudo-effective line bundles on projective manifolds. In particular, he postulated the existence of an almost-holomorphic "reduction map", whose fibers are maximal subvarieties on which the line bundle is numerically trivial. The purpose of this note is to give a simple, algebraic proof of the existence of a reduction map in the case where the line bundle is nef.

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arXiv2001

Lines on contact manifolds II

Complex contact manifolds have recently received considerable attention. Many of the newer publications approach contact manifolds via the covering family of minimal rational curves. This short note furthers the study of these curves. It is known that for any point x in X, the subvariety, which is covered by those curves which contain x, is Legendrian. We will now study the deformations of these subvarieties which are generated by moving the base point. As a main application, we give a positive answer to a question of J.M. Hwang in the case of contact manifolds: a sufficiently general tangent vector is contained in at most a single minimal rational curve. The author believes that this is a necessary step towards a full classification of contact manifolds. We give a second application by showing that the normalization of the subvariety of minimal curves through x is isomorphic to a projective cone.

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arXiv2000

Uniqueness of complex contact structures

Let X be a complex Fano-manifolds with second Betti-number 1 which carries a contact structure. It follows from previous work that such a manifold can always be covered by lines. Thus, it seems natural to consider the geometry of lines in greater detail. In this brief note we show that if x in X is a general point, then all lines through x are smooth. If X is not the projective space, then the tangent spaces to lines generate the contact distribution at x. As a consequence we obtain that the contact structure on X is unique, a result previously obtained by C. LeBrun in the case that X is a twistor space.

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arXiv2000

Projective bundles of singular plane cubics

Classification theory and the study of projective varieties which are covered by rational curves of minimal degrees naturally leads to the study of families of singular rational curves. Since families of arbitrarily singular curves are hard to handle, it has been shown in a previous paper that there exists a partial resolution of singularities which transforms a bundle of possibly badly singular curves into a bundle of nodal and cuspidal plane cubics. In cases which are of interest for classification theory, the total spaces of these bundles will clearly be projective. It is, however, generally false that an arbitrary bundle of plane cubics is globally projective. For that reason the question of projectivity seems to be of interest, and the present work gives a characterization of the projective bundles.

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arXiv2000

Families of singular rational curves

Let X be a projective variety which is covered by a family of rational curves of minimal degree. The classic bend-and-break argument of Mori asserts that if x and y are two general points, then there are at most finitely many curves in that family which contain both x and y. In this work we shed some light on the question as to whether two sufficiently general points actually define a unique curve. As an immediate corollary to the results of this paper, we give a characterization of projective spaces which improves on the known generalizations of Kobayashi-Ochiai's theorem.

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arXiv1999

Projective Contact Manifolds

We prove that a projective contact manifold X with second Betti number at least 2 whose canonical bundle K_X is not nef, is always the projectivised tangent bundle P(T_Y) of a projective manifold Y. It is expected that the canonical bundle of a projective contact manifold is never nef; we prove this unless possibly K_X^2 = 0 and K_X is not numerically trivial. Moreover we study more generally nef subsheaves of rank 1 in the cotangent bundle which are proportional to the canonical bundle.

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arXiv1998

Group Actions on S^6 and complex structures on P_3

It is proved that if S^6 possesses an integrable complex structure, then there exists a 1-dimensional family of pairwise different exotic complex structures on P_3(C). This follows immediately from the main result of the paper: S^6 is not the underlying differentiable manifold of an almost homogeneous complex manifold X. Via elementary Lie theoretic techniques this is reduced to ruling out the possibility of a C^*-action on a certain non-normal surface E in X. A contradiction is reached by analyzing combinatorial aspects of the non-normal locus N of E and its preimage in the normalization of E.

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arXiv1998

Simple Models of Quasihomogeneous Projective 3-Folds

Let X be a projective complex 3-fold, quasihomogeneous with respect to an action of a linear algebraic group. We show that X is a compactification of SL_2/G, G a discrete subgroup, or that X can be equivariantly transformed into the 3-dim. projective space, the quadric Q_3, or into certain quasihomogeneous bundles with very simple structure.

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arXiv1998

Relatively Minimal Quasihomogeneous Projective 3-Folds

In the present work we classify the relatively minimal 3-dimensional quasihomogeneous complex projective varieties under the assumption that the automorphism group is not solvable. By relatively minimal we understand varieties X having at most Q-factorial terminal singularities and allowing an extremal contraction X to Y, where dim Y <3.

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arXiv1998

On the Classification of 3-dimensional SL_2(C)-varieties

In the present work we describe 3-dimensional complex SL_2-varieties where the generic SL_2-orbit is a surface. We apply this result to classify the minimal 3-dimensional projective varieties with Picard-number 1 where a semisimple group acts such that the generic orbits are 2-dimensional. This is an ingredient of the classification [Keb98, math.AG/9805042] of the 3-dimensional relatively minimal quasihomogeneous varieties where the automorphism group is not solvable.

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