Determinant fiber bundles, Quillen metric and degeneracy of curves. (Q921201)

One of initial motives of this work was to comprehend mathematically the concerned results of many physicists, especially \textit{A. A. Belavin} and \textit{V. G. Knizhnik} [Complex geometry and theory of quantum strings, Landau Inst., Preprint]. Let \(X\) and \(S\) be complex analytic varieties, \(\pi\) : \(X\to S\) be a proper holomorphic mapping and det(R\(\pi\) *\(\xi\)) be the Grothendieck-Knudsen-Mumford determinant of the direct image of a holomorphic vectorial fiber \(\xi\) on X constructed by \textit{F. Knudsen} and \textit{D. Mumford} [Math. Scand. 39, 19--55 (1976; Zbl 0343.14008)] and \textit{J.-M. Bismut}, \textit{M. Gillet} and \textit{C. Soulé} [Commun. Math. Phys. 115, No. 2, 301--351 (1988; Zbl 0651.32017)]. Quillen gave a Hermitian metric equipping which the fiber \(\lambda (\xi)=(\det (R\pi *\xi))^{-1}\) admits singular fibers. The aim of this work is to obtain a refinement analogous to the theory of Riemann-Roch-Grothendieck in case that the above \(\pi\) is a family of complex curves with ordinary singularities. Let \(\Delta\) be the divisor parameterizing the singular fibers of \(\pi\). Then \(\lambda (\xi)| S- \Delta\) is equipped with a metric of Quillen. This metric is not continued on \(S\), and this work describes their singularities in the neighbourhood of \(\Delta\). The calculation of the currents furnishes the desired refinement of the Riemann-Roch-Grothendieck.