Bigness of the tangent bundles of projective bundles over curves (Q6057774)

Positive properties of the tangent bundle of smooth complex projective varieties \(X\) have important geometrical consequences on the variety. Ampleness implies that \(X\) is the projective space, nefness and \(X\) Fano imply, conjecturally, that \(X\) is homogeneous. It is natural then to study consequences of the tangent to be big. Bigness of the tangent for surfaces, for instance, is equivalent to the fact that the self intersection of the anticanonical bundle is bigger that or equal to \(5\) (several results of this type are recalled in the Introduction of the paper under review). The main new result of this paper (see Main Theorem) states that for a projective bundle \(X= {\mathbb P}_C(E)\) over a smooth projective curve \(C\), it holds that its tangent bundle is big if and only if \(E\) is unstable or \(C\) is a line. The proof splits in several parts: the case \(E\) semistable is studied in Theorem 9, the case unstable in Theorem 15, and the exceptional case \(C={\mathbb P}^1\) is discused in Remark 11.