A pathology of asymptotic multiplicity in the relative setting (Q510375)

Let \(X\) be a smooth complex projective variety and \(D\) a big divisor on \(X\). For \(V \subset X\) subvariety of \(X\) one can define the multiplicity mult\(_V(mD)\) of the linear system \(|mD|\) along \(V\) as the multiplicity of its general member and the asympotic multiplicity \(\sigma_V(D)\) of \(D\) along \(V\) as the limit when \(m\) goes to infinity of mult\(_V(mD)/m\). This definition can be extended to \(D\) pseudoeffective and not big (on the boundary of the closure of the effective cone) by fixing an ample divisor \(A\) and defining \(\sigma_V(D)\) as the limit when \(\epsilon\) goes to zero of \(\sigma_V(D+\epsilon A)\) which results to be finite. The paper under review demonstrates by example that this is not true when considering a relative situation, see Thm.1: there exists a projective family \(\pi: X \to S\), a \(\pi\)-pseudoeffective divisor \(D\) on \(X\) and a subvariety \(V \subset X\) for which the relative asymptotic multiplicity \(\sigma_V(D;X/S)\) is infinite (for proper definitions in the relative version go to Section 2). As a consequence, blowing up \(X\) along \(V\), the pull-back of \(D\) does not admit any Zariski decomposition, even in a very broad sense, see Cor. 2 and 3. The example proposed is constructed via the versal deformation space of a fiber of Kodaira type \(I_2\), where the base is a smooth two dimensional germ and the fiber over the central point is the union of two rational curves, one of them chosen as \(V\). The construction of \(D\) is described in Theorem 9.