Hyperbolicity and specialness of symmetric powers (Q2117996)

In this very interesting paper, the authors study the relation between hyperbolicity/specialness conditions for varieties and their symmetric powers. Here, ``specialness'' is used in the sense introduced by Campana; one equivalent condition is that a variety is special if the bound for the Kodaira dimension of a subsheaf of the sheaf of differential \(p\)-forms given by the Bogomolov-Sommese vanishing theorem is not attained by any subsheaf. The authors show that symmetric powers of special varieties are special, and in almost all cases the converse holds. Closely related, it is established that a smooth variety is rationally connected if and only if some/all symmetric powers are rationally connected. At the other end of the spectrum, they investigate hyperbolicity properties of symmetric powers and establish that symmetric powers of generic hypersurfaces of sufficiently high degree in projective spaces are hyperbolic. In fact, more refined results concerning strong algebraic degeneracy are proven. Finally, an application to symmetric powers of ball quotients is given.