On deformations of curves supported on rigid divisors (Q5964954)

In this paper, the author studies \textit{supporting divisors} of fibred varieties, with emphasis on fibred surfaces. Roughly speaking, a supporting divisor expresses where the deformation takes place, and hence it can be used to measure how far is a given fibred variety from being trivial. The initial motivation of this paper is a conjecture of \textit{G. Xiao} [Duke Math. J. 55, 597--602 (1987; Zbl 0651.14021)], which predicts that for any non-trivial fibration \(f:\,S \to B\) of curves of genus \(g\geq 2\) with relative irregularity \(q_f:=q(S)-g(B)\), one has \(q_f\leq g/2+1\). The main results are divided into two parts: one is related to produce a `horizontal' fibration on a given fibred surface where its supporting divisor satisfies certain restraints; the other is to tell when one can produce such a supporting divisor on a given fibred surface. These remarkable technical results form a crucial preparation of his further work [``Xiao's conjecture for general fibred surfaces'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1401.7502}] joint with \textit{M. Á. Barja} and \textit{J. C. Naranjo}, where they prove a modified version of Xiao's conjecture for general fibred surfaces.