Fano manifolds and stability of tangent bundles (Q2030084)

Let \(X\) be a Fano manifold, that is a complex projective manifold such that the anticanonical divisor \(-K_X\) is ample. If the Picard number of \(X\) is one, a widely believed folklore conjecture claims that the tangent bundle \(T_X\) is semistable (in the sense of Mumford-Takemoto). In this paper the author gives a series of counterexamples to this conjecture! \newline The counterexamples are obtained by a family of horospherical varieties classified by \textit{B. Pasquier} [Math. Ann. 344, No. 4, 963--987 (2009; Zbl 1173.14028)]: for these manifolds the action of the group \(\mbox{Aut}^0(X)\) on \(X\) has two orbits, the open orbit \(X^0\) and a closed orbit \(Z\). Moreover the action on the blow-up \(\mbox{Bl}_Z X\) again has two orbits, the open orbit \(X^0\) and the exceptional divisor \(E\). The manifold \(\mbox{Bl}_Z X\) admits a smooth fibration onto a lower-dimensional manifold \(Y\), the push-forward of the relative tangent bundle to \(X\) defines an algebraically integrable foliation \(\mathcal F \subset T_X\). The author shows that this foliation is canonical in the sense that it is the unique algebraically integrable foliation on \(X\) that is \(\mbox{Aut}^0(X)\)-invariant. General arguments show that the stability of \(T_X\) can be verified by computing the slope of the foliation \(\mathcal F\). It turns out that for infinitely many manifolds in Pasquier's list, the subsheaf \(\mathcal F \subset T_X\) destabilises the tangent bundle. The reviewer recommends to any complex geometer to read this beautiful paper.