Fano threefolds with affine canonical extensions (Q6200347)

Given a compact Kähler manifold \(M\) with tangent bundle \(T_M\), a Kähler class determines a canonical extension \(0\to\mathcal{O}_M\to V\to T_M\to 0\). Then the complement \(Z_M= \mathbb{P}(V)\backslash \mathbb{P}(T_M)\) is an affine bundle over \(M\). It is conjectured that for a projective manifold \(M\), if it admits a canonical extension \(Z_M\) which is an affine variety, then \(M\) is rational homogeneous; see [\textit{D. Greb} and \textit{M. L. Wong}, J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 101, No. 2, 786--827 (2020; Zbl 1442.32031)] and [\textit{A. Höring} and \textit{T. Peternell}, ``Stein complements in compact Kähler manifolds'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2111.03303}]. In the paper under review, the authors give a positive answer to this conjecture for Fano threefolds (see Theorem 1.2). For the proof, the authors first investigate the structure of extremal rays on \(M\) and reduce the proof to the case of Picard number 1 (see Corollaries 2.4 and 2.5). Certain arguments work even in higher dimensions. Then the authors focus on the most difficult part which is to exclude the case of \(M\) being a quintic del Pezzo threefold: by constructing a weak Fano model \((\mathbb{P}(V)^-,\mathbb{P}(T_M)^-)\) of \((\mathbb{P}(V),\mathbb{P}(T_M))\) in Theorem 3.1, the authors prove that \(Z_M\) is not Stein. As the canonical extension being affine implies that the tangent bundle is big [\textit{D. Greb} and \textit{M. L. Wong}, J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 101, No. 2, 786--827 (2020; Zbl 1442.32031)], the authors conclude the proof by [\textit{A. Höring} and \textit{J. Liu}, Collect. Math. 74, No. 3, 639--686 (2023; Zbl 1522.14055)].