A conjecture on the torsion of the Chern classes of Gauss-Manin bundles (Q616614)

The article under review concerns the orders of the Chern classes of Gauss-Manin bundles. The authors make a conjecture which states that for any \(t\in \mathbb{N}\), the \(t\)-th Chern class of a Gauss-Manin bundle of a semi-stable fibration is annihilated by certain positive integer \(N_t\). To be more precise, let \(f: X\to Y\) be a projective morphism between two smooth quasi-projective schemes defined over an algebraically closed field \(K\) of characteristic \(0\) and let \(D\hookrightarrow X\), \(E\hookrightarrow Y\) be two divisors having normal crossings. Suppose that \(f\) is semi-stable with respect to \(D\) and \(E\). Denote by \(\Omega^\bullet_{X/Y}(\log)\) the relative logarithmic de Rham complex of \(X/Y\) with respect to \(D\) and \(E\). For \(j\geq0\), one defines \(\text{H}_{\text{dR}}^j(X/Y)(\log):=\text{R}^jf_*(\Omega^\bullet_{X/Y}(\log))\). It can be proved that \(\text{H}_{\text{dR}}^j(X/Y)(\log)\) is a locally free sheaf of finite rank. The numbers \(N_t\) are defined as follows: if \(t=0\), then \(N_t=0\); if \(t\) is even and strictly positive, then \(N_t=2\cdot\prod_{p-1\mid t}p^{\text{ord}_p(t)+1}\) where \(p\) runs over all prime numbers; if \(t\) is odd, then \(N_t=2\). After defining \(N_t\), the authors conjectured that for positive integers \(j\) and \(t\), the equality \[ N_t\cdot c_t(\text{H}_{\text{dR}}^j(X/Y)(\log))=0 \] holds in the Chow group \(\text{CH}^t(Y)\). Besides announcing this conjecture, in the article under review, the authors have proved many consequences of it and they have also shown a few special cases where the conjecture holds.