On moment map and bigness of tangent bundles of \(G\)-varieties (Q6093187)

Let \(X\) be a complex projective manifold. We say that the tangent bundle \(T_X\) is big if the tautological class on the Grothendieck projectivisation \(\mathbb P(T_X)\) is a big Cartier divisor. In analogy with Mori's famous characterisation of projective manifolds with ample tangent bundle one expects that manifolds with big tangent bundle enjoy some rather special properties, an expectation that has been confirmed by several papers in the last years [\textit{A. Höring} et al., J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 106, No. 1, 27--59 (2022; Zbl 1523.14075); \textit{H. Kim} et al., ``Bigness of the tangent bundle of a Fano threefold with Picard number two'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2201.06351}; \textit{A. Höring} and \textit{J. Liu}, Collect. Math. 74, No. 3, 639--686 (2023; Zbl 1522.14055)]. So far we only had a rather limited number of examples with Picard number one that are not rational homogeneous manifolds, because proving the bigness of the tangent bundle usually required some understanding of the projective geometry of the variety. In this paper the author considers projective manifolds \(X\) endowed with the action of a connected algebraic group \(G\). For these manifolds one can define the moment map \[ \Phi^G_X: T^* X \rightarrow \mathfrak g^* \] as follows: for a point \(x \in X\), the map \(T_x^* X \rightarrow \mathfrak g^*\) is the cotangent map of the orbit map \(\mu_x: G \rightarrow G.x\). Denote by \(\mathcal M^G_X \subset \mathfrak g^*\) the closure of the image. The main technical result of this paper states that the tangent bundle of the \(G\)-variety \(X\) is big if for some effective big divisor \(A\) on \(X\), one has \[ \dim (\Phi^G_X(T^* X|_{\mathrm{Supp}\,A})) < \dim (\mathcal M^G_X). \] As a first consequence of this result one obtains the bigness of the tangent bundle for spherical varieties with a \(G\)-stable affine open subset, horospherical varieties or quasihomogeneous varieties with \(G\) a commutative linear algebraic group. Moreover the author constructs infinitely many new examples of Fano manifolds with Picard number one that have big tangent bundle but are not rational homogeneous spaces. Finally if \(X\) is Fano manifold with Picard number one that is an equivariant compactification of the vector group \(G=\mathbb G^n_a\) with an open orbit, the author describes the pseudoeffective cone of \(\mathbb P(T_X)\) and relates it to the geometry of the variety of minimal rational tangents.