Special termination for log canonical pairs (Q6090240)

This article provides a complete proof of special termination for log canonical pairs and of the extension of that result to NQC log canonical g-pairs. The authors show that assuming termination of flips for \(\mathbb Q\)-factorial klt pairs in dimension at most \(n-1\), then in any sequence of flips of log canonical pairs, eventually the flipping locus is disjoint from the non-klt locus. Special termination of dlt pairs is proved in [\textit{O. Fujino}, Oxf. Lect. Ser. Math. Appl. 35, 63--75 (2007; Zbl 1286.14025)]. Establishing the result for log canonical pairs is important as special termination is a crucial step in the proof of termination of flips, one of the remaining open questions in the Minimal Model Program (MMP) in characteristic zero. The category of NQC g-pairs is a recent generalisation of that of pairs [\textit{C. Birkar} and \textit{D.-Q. Zhang}, Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 123, 283--331 (2016; Zbl 1348.14038)]. The motivation to extend special termination to NQC log canonical g-pairs stems stems from recent works, which have shown that understanding the Minimal Model Program of g-pairs is a necessary step in establishing results in the MMP of usual pairs (see [\textit{J. Han} and \textit{Z. Li}, Math. Z. 302, No. 2, 707--741 (2022; Zbl 1504.14031)] and [\textit{C. Hacon} and \textit{J. Moraga}, Math. Res. Lett. 27, No. 5, 1393--1421 (2020; Zbl 1467.14043)].