Punctual characterization of the unitary flat bundle of weight one PVHS and application to families of curves (Q6111612)

Consider a polarized variation of Hodge structures (PVHS) of weight one and rank \(2g\) on a smooth complex manifold \(B\), which in particular consists of a short exact sequence of holomorphic vector bundles on \(B\) \[0\longrightarrow E=E^{1,0}\longrightarrow \mathcal{H}=\mathbb{V}_{\mathbb{Z}}\otimes_{\mathbb{Z}}\mathcal{O}_B\longrightarrow E^{0,1}\longrightarrow 0\] together with a Gauß-Manin connection on \(\mathcal{H}\). The bundle \(E\) carries a natural (maximal) flat unitary subbundle \(\mathcal{U}\subseteq E\) which encodes many properties of the natural modular map \(B\rightarrow\mathcal{A}_g\) and its relation to the (open) Torelli locus \(\mathcal{T}_g\subseteq\mathcal{A}_g\) of jacobian varieties. The paper considers the problem of pointwise determining the fibres of the flat unitary subbundle of a PVHS of weight one. Starting from the associated Higgs field, and assuming the base has dimension \(1\), we construct a family of (smooth but possibly non-holomorphic) morphisms of vector bundles with the property that the intersection of their kernels at a general point is the fibre of the flat subbundle. We explore the first one of these morphisms in the case of a geometric PVHS arising from a family of smooth projective curves, showing that it acts as the cup-product with some sort of ``second-order Kodaira-Spencer class'' which we introduce, and check in the case of a family of smooth plane curves that this additional condition is non-trivial. The main results of the paper are the following two theorems. \begin{itemize} \item[1.] Let \(\dim B=1\). Then there are smooth morphisms of vector bundles \[\eta^{\left(1\right)},\eta^{\left(2\right)},\ldots,\eta^{\left(g\right)}\colon E\rightarrow E^{0,1}\] such that for any \(\alpha\in\Gamma\left(E\right)\) it holds \[ \alpha\in\Gamma\left(\mathcal{U}\right)\Longleftrightarrow\eta^{\left(1\right)}\left(\alpha\right)=\eta^{\left(2\right)}\left(\alpha\right)=\ldots=\eta^{\left(g\right)}\left(\alpha\right)=0. \] In particular we have \[ \mathcal{U}_b\subseteq\bigcap_{k=1}^{g}\ker\eta^{\left(k\right)}_b\subseteq E_b \] with equality for \(b\) in a dense Zariski-open subset of \(B\). \item[2.] Let \(f\colon\mathcal{C}\rightarrow B\) be a family of smooth projective curves \(C_b=f^{-1}\left(b\right)\) with \(\dim B=1\). For any \(b\in B\) let \(\mathcal{K}_b\subseteq E_b=H^0\left(\omega_{C_b}\right)\) be the fibre of \(\mathcal{K}\) on \(B\), and \(\mu_b\in H^1\left(T_{C_b}\right)\) the second-order Kodaira-Spencer class of \(C_b\subseteq\mathcal{C}\). Let \[\hat{\mu_b}\colon H^0\left(\omega_{C_b}\right)\stackrel{\mu_b\cdot}{\longrightarrow}H^1\left(\mathcal{O}_{C_b}\right)=E_b^{\vee}\twoheadrightarrow\mathcal{K}_b^{\vee}.\] Then \(\mathcal{U}_b\subseteq\mathcal{K}_b\cap\ker\hat{\mu_b}\). \end{itemize} The additional morphisms of vector bundles are constructed from the Higgs field \(\theta\) by applying the connection \(\nabla^{T}\) induced on \(\mathrm{Hom}^s\left(E,E^{0,1}\right)\) by the Gauss-Manin connection. If the base \(B\) of the family is actually a submanifold of \(\mathcal{A}_g\) (or the Siegel upper-half space \(\mathbb{H}_g\)), this connection \(\nabla^{T}\) is the restriction to \(B\) of the Levi-Civita connection of the Siegel metric. Thus our construction hints again at a connection between the equality \(\mathcal{U}=\mathcal{K}\) and the existence of geodesics inside \(B\) with respect to the Siegel metric.