Minkowski decomposition of Okounkov bodies on surfaces (Q740248)

Let \(X\) be a smooth projective variety of dimension \(n\) and \(D\) a big divisor on \(X\). An admissible flag on \(X\) is a sequence \(Y_n \subset \dots \subset Y_1 \subset X\) where each \(Y_i\) is a subvariety of codimension \(i\) of \(X\) and \(Y_n\) is a smooth point on each \(Y_i\). To any section \(s \in H^0(X, {\mathcal O}_X(kD))\) one can assign a \(n\)-uple of integers \(v(s)=(v_1(s), \dots, v_n(s))\) where \(v_1(s)\) is the order of vanishing of \(s\) along \(Y_1\), \(v_2(s)\) is the order of vanishing along \(Y_2\) of the section \(s_1\in H^0(Y_1, {\mathcal O}_{Y_1}(kD-v_1(s)Y_1))\) and so on. The set \(S(D)\) collects all the vectors \((v_1(s),\dots,v_n(s))/k\), \(s \in H^0(X, {\mathcal O}_X(kD))\) and the Okounkov body \(\Delta(D)\) associated to \(D\) via the chosen flag is the convex hull of the set \(S(D)\). The construction respects numerical equivalence and can be extended to rational and non rational classes of big divisors in the corresponding Néron-Severi vector space \(N^1(X)_{\mathbb{R}}\). This convex bodies are an interesting object of study because they encode plenty of information on the properties of the line bundles. It is known that the Minkowski sum \(\Delta(D_1)+\Delta(D_2)\) is contained in \(\Delta(D_1+D_2)\) and then it is natural to ask when equality holds and when an Okounkov body can be decomposed as a sum of \textit{simpler} bodies of other divisors. The paper under review deals with this problem for surfaces whose pseudoeffective cone is rational polyhedral. In this situation, for a general flag, it is proved that the Okounkov body of a big divisor decomposes as the Minkowski sum of finitely many simplices and line segments, which are in fact the Oukunkov bodies of a finite set of divisors, called \textit{Minkowski basis}, explicitly constructed in Section 3.