The sectional genus of quasi-polarised varieties (Q992021)

A quasi-polarized variety is a pair \((X,A)\) where \(X\) is an integral projective scheme and \(A\) is a nef and big Cartier divisor on \(X\). Let us denote by \(n\) the dimension of \(X\) as assume that the base field is algebraically closed of characteristic zero. The Hilbert polynomial \(\chi(X, {\mathcal O}_X(tA))\) can be written as an integer linear combination of \(t^{[j]}/j!\), being \(t^{[j]}=t(t+1) \dots (t+j-1)\) and \(t^{[0]}=1\). The sectional genus of \(A\) is defined as one minus the coefficient of \(t^{[n-1]}\) in that expression. It was conjectured by Fujita that the sectional genus is always non-negative. The paper under review gives a proof of this conjecture (see Theorem 1.1). Moreover it is shown that if the sectional genus is zero then the \(\Delta\)-genus is also zero and this leads to a birational classification of quasi-polarized varieties with sectional genus equal to zero.