Seshadri constants on surfaces of general type (Q930581)

Given a smooth projective variety \(X\), let \(L\) be a nef and big line bundle on \(X\) and \(x\) a point of \(X\). Then the Seshadri constant of \(L\) at \(x\) is defined as \[ \varepsilon (L, x):= \inf_{C} \frac{L\cdot C}{\text{mult}_x(C)}, \] where the infimum is taken over all the irreducible curves \(C\subset X\) passing through \(x\). This notion was introduced by \textit{J.-P. Demailly} [Complex algebraic varieties, Proc. Conf., Bayreuth/Ger. 1990, Lect. Notes Math. 1507, 87--104 (1992; Zbl 0784.32024)]. When \(X\) is a surface and \(L\) is ample, \textit{L. Ein} and \textit{R. Lazarsfeld} [Journées de Géométrie Algébrique d'Orsay, France 1992, Astérisque 218, 177--186 (1993; Zbl 0812.14027)] proved that, for a very general point \(\eta\in X\), \(\varepsilon(\eta, L)\geq 1\). This paper establishes some properties of the Seshadri constants of the canonical bundle on minimal surfaces of general type (i.e. those surfaces for which the canonical bundle \(K_{X}\) is nef and big). In particular it is shown that if the Seshadri constant \(\varepsilon (K_{X}, x)\) at a point \(x\) is between 0 and 1, then it is of the form \((m - 1)/ m\) for some integer \(m \geq 2\), and there is a curve \( C\) passing through \(x\) such that \(\varepsilon (K_{X}, x)=\frac{K_{X}\cdot C}{\text{mult}_x(C)} \). Furthermore these curves are characterized. The values of \(\epsilon (K_{X}, x)\) for a very general point \(x\) are also studied and it is shown that small values of the Seshadri constant in a very general point of \(x\) correspond to special geometric features of the surface \(X\), like the existence of genus \(2\) fibrations.