Effective cycles on the symmetric product of a curve. II: The Abel-Jacobi faces (Q2039126)

The study of nef and pseudo-effective cones of divisors (up to numerical equivalence) is very important in algebraic geometry. The dual cones of 1-cycles are also extensively used in minimal model program. In recent years there are results related to cones of higher codimension cycles. The main interesting part there is that they behave in an unpredictable way for nef and pseudo-effective cycles. In this paper the authors study the nef and pseudo-effective cones of tautological cycles on large symmetric product of a smooth, projective curve. The main result of this paper is to generalize the extremality property of the pullback of the theta divisor under the Abel-Jacobi map (from the symmetric product to the Picard variety of the curve), to cycles of intermediate codimension for large symmetric powers. To study the faces of the tautological pseudo-effective cone the authors introduce the contractibility index of a cycle with respect to a morphism and then to define the notion of contractibility faces of pseudo-effective cones. The main question addressed is to find the numerical range such that the contractibility faces of pseudo-effective cones are non-trivial. The authors also define the notion of Abel-Jacobi faces for symmetric product of curves by using the notion of contractibility faces of pseudo-effective cones and conclude the non-triviality of such faces for pseudo-effective cones, for certain numerical range. Intersecting with the tautological ring they defined tautological Abel-Jacobi faces of tautological pseudo-effective cones and find the numerical range where they are non-trivial. This uses the Brill-Noether theory. These faces are also related to a decreasing filtration of the tautological ring called the \(\theta\)-filtration. The link between \(\theta\)-filtration and Abel-Jacobi faces of the tautological pseudo-effective cones are also established in this article. Using this relation the authors show that in many numerical ranges non-trivial Abel-Jacobi faces of the tautological pseudo-effective cone form a maximal chain of perfect non-trivial faces (perfect in the sense that it is a full-dimensional cone in the orthogonal complement of the corresponding linear subspace of the \(\theta\)-filtration).