Shokurov's boundary property (Q2494188)

The article under review aims to generalize Kodaira's canonical bundle formula for elliptic surfaces to higher dimensional fibrations. A lc-trivial fibration \(f:(X,B)\to Y\) is a log pair \((X,B)\) and a contraction \(f:X\to Y\) of proper normal varieties such that 1) \((X,B)\) is Kawamata log terminal over the generic point of \(Y\), 2) the rank of \(f_*\mathcal{O}_X(\lceil {\mathbf A}(X,B) \rceil )\) is \(1\), and 3) \(K_X+B\sim _{\mathbb Q}f^*D\) for some \(\mathbb{Q}\)-Cartier divisor \(D\) on \(Y\). Given such a fibration, there are uniquely defined \(\mathbb{Q}\)-Weil divisors \(M_Y\) and \(B_Y\) (the moduli and discriminant part) such that \(K_X+B\sim _{\mathbb Q}f^*(K_Y+B_Y+M_Y)\). It is expected that: \((Y,B_Y)\) is a log pair with the same kind of singularities as \((X,B)\) and that the divisor \(M_Y\) is semiample. The main results of this paper are that: Theorem 0.1. If \(\text{ dim}Y=1\), then \(M_Y\) is semiample, and Theorem 0.2. There exists a birational morphism \(Y'\to Y\) such that i) \(K_{Y'}+B_{Y'}\) is \(\mathbb{Q}\)-Cartier and for any birational morphism \(\nu : Y''\to Y'\), one has \(\nu ^*( K_{Y'}+B_{Y'})= K_{Y''}+B_{Y''}\); ii) \(M_{Y'}\) is a nef \(\mathbb{Q}\)-divisor and \(\nu^* M_{Y'}=M_{Y''}\) for any \(\nu\) as above. It should be noted that ii) follows from i) and [\textit{Y. Kawamata}, Am. J. Math. 120, No.5, 893--899 (1998; Zbl 0919.14003)]. Despite the technical nature of these statements, it is shown that they have important applications to higher dimensional birational geometry such as inversion of adjunction and the behavior of Shokurov's FGA algebra's under restriction to exceptional log canonical centers.