Single point Seshadri constants on rational surfaces (Q1703082)

In the present note, the authors exhibit irrational single-point Seshadri constants on a rational surface \(X\) obtained by blowing-up very general points on the complex projective plane, assuming that all prime divisors on \(X\) of negative self-intersection are smooth rational curves. This work is motivated by a similar result proved in [\textit{M. Dumnicki} et al., Adv. Math. 303, 1162--1170 (2016; Zbl 1347.14002)], where the authors, in order to conclude the same statement, assumed that the SHGH conjecture holds for \(X\). However, it turns out that one needs to assume only a weak SHGH conjecture, which can be formulated as follows. Weak SHGH. Let \(X\) be the blowing up of the complex projective plane along \(s\geq 10\) very general points. Then all irreducible and reduced curves with \(C^{2} < 0\) are \((-1)\)-curves, i.e., smooth rational curves with \(C^{2} = -1\) and \(K_{X}.C = -1\). Let us recall that for a given point \(x\) on a smooth projective surface \(S\) and an ample line bundle \(L\), the Seshadri constant \(\varepsilon (S,L;x)\) is defined as \[ \varepsilon (S,L;x) = \text{inf}_{C} \frac{L.C}{\text{mult}_{x}C}, \] where the infimum is taken over all irreducible and reduced curves passing through \(x\). Main Theorem. Let \(s\geq 0\) be an integer. Let \(\pi : X \rightarrow \mathbb{P}^{2}_{\mathbb{C}}\) be the blow up of the complex projective plane at \(s\) very general points \(p_{1}, \dots, p_{s}\), and let \(\pi_{1}: Y \rightarrow X\) be the blow up of \(X\) at a very general point \(x \in X\). Suppose that the weak SHGH holds for \(Y\). Then there exists an ample line bundle \(L\) on \(X\) such that the Seshadri constant \(\varepsilon(X, L; x)\) is irrational iff \(s\geq 9\).