Remarks on Xiao's approach of slope inequalities (Q1791249)

Let \(f: S \to B\) be a relatively minimal generically smooth fibration of fiber genus \(g\) from a smooth projective surface to a smooth projective curve over an algebraically closed field \(k\). If the characteristic of \(k\) is \(0\), \textit{G. Xiao} [Math. Ann. 276, 449--466 (1987; Zbl 0596.14028)] proved the slope inequality \(K_{S/B}^{2} \geq \frac{4(g-1)}{g} - \chi _{f}\). Here \(\chi _{f} = \text{deg} f_{*} \omega _{S/B}\). It is also known that the slope inequality holds for a semi-stable fibration \(f\) over a field of arbitrary characteristic. In the paper under review, the authors proved a more general result of the slope inequality over a field of arbitrary characteristic. Precisely, assume \(D\) is a relatively nef divisor of \(f\) such that \(D|_{F}\) is a special divisor and is generated by global sections on a general fiber \(F\). If \(h^{0}(D|_{F})- D \cdot F -1>0\), then an inequality \(D^{2} \geq \frac{2D \cdot F}{h^{0}(D|_{F})} \text{deg}f_{*}\mathcal{O}_{S}(D))\) holds (Theorem 2). The key idea of the proof is to construct a sequence of effective divisors satisfying a designated condition for a divisor \(p^{k}D\) using the Harder-Narasimhan filtration of \(F_{B}^{k*} f_{*}\mathcal{O}_{S}(D)\) for which the subquotient at each step is strongly semi-stable. They also prove, for a non-hyperelliptic fibration \(f :S \to B\), an improved slope inequality \(K_{S/B}^{2} \geq \min \{ \frac{9(g-1)}{2(g+1)} , 4 \} \chi _{f}\) over a field of arbitrary inequality by a similar method (Theorem 3).