Determinant line bundle Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
The top exterior power of a rank- vector bundle is its determinant line bundle. A short exact sequence of vector bundles gives a canonical isomorphism of the middle determinant with the tensor product of the other two. Locally, a subbundle frame followed by lifts of a quotient frame defines it; changing lifts only adds off-diagonal blocks. This is the determinant step in adjunction for a smooth submanifold.
The derivative of a section defining a regular zero locus patches intrinsically along that locus because changes of trivialization introduce derivative terms multiplied by the vanishing section. Its tangent kernel and surjectivity give . Combining this with adjunction for a smooth submanifold gives .
The canonical bundle is , the holomorphic line bundle of holomorphic top forms on a complex -manifold. For an embedded complex submanifold of dimension , the holomorphic normal bundle is the quotient
Taking determinants and duals gives adjunction for a smooth submanifold:
For a closed smooth hypersurface, is its divisor line bundle, equipped with a holomorphic section whose zero divisor is with multiplicity one. If locally defines , local meromorphic generators transform by the holomorphic units . The stated normal-bundle relation is
Equivalently the conormal is . The closed-divisor interpretation is needed to define ; an arbitrary nonclosed local submanifold does not define that global divisor bundle.
For a holomorphic subbundle , define on sections of , with acting on the bundle factor of a bundle-valued form. It obeys the Leibniz rule. Since is holomorphic, lies in , so . For , their inner products with the normal components of vanish; hence projecting preserves metric compatibility. The uniqueness proved for the Chern connection identifies
This is the projected Chern connection.
Choose the adapted smooth unitary frame and retain Question 2's input-index convention. The connection matrix is skew-Hermitian. Its upper-left block is for ; writing the lower-left block as forces the upper-right block to be :
Holomorphicity of makes the normal part of vanish, so has type , and has type . The matrix represents the second fundamental form of a holomorphic subbundle in this input-index convention. These types would appear in the opposite blocks with coefficient-column indices; they must not be swapped while retaining the printed minus-sign Cartan equation.
Take the upper-left block of the Cartan curvature equation with input indices. It is
Therefore the curvature formula for a holomorphic subbundle is
The sign and the order of the factors both follow from the displayed block multiplication.
Now let be a complex torus and a closed smooth hypersurface. The torus has a translation-invariant flat Kähler metric, and and are holomorphically trivial. Give its flat metric and apply the preceding formula to . Since ,
For a tangent vector , the latter coefficient is , so is a semipositive real form. Thus is a semipositive holomorphic line bundle. This proves the semipositive canonical bundle of a submanifold of a complex torus assertion directly from curvature. By adjunction for a smooth submanifold, .
Restrict a positive metric on to . The tensor-product metric on
has curvature , which is positive for every nonnegative integer . Hence
The integer condition is implicit in a tensor power. No assertion of strict positivity of is required.
For vanishing, write . The allowed Kodaira vanishing theorem says that on a compact Kähler manifold , for when is a positive holomorphic line bundle. Since is trivial, its application on the torus gives for .
For every , the divisor section gives the exact sequence
where . Crucially,
and is positive by the proved restriction statement. The induced Kähler metric makes compact Kähler, so Kodaira vanishing theorem on gives for all . In the long exact sequence in sheaf cohomology, the segment
then has zero outside terms by induction. Therefore
This proves vanishing for divisor twists on a complex torus using restriction positivity and the divisor exact sequence, rather than presuming ambient positivity of every divisor twist.
The holomorphic normal bundle is the quotient , of rank . The tangent sequence is a short exact sequence of holomorphic vector bundles:
Taking determinant line bundles gives . Dualizing and rearranging proves adjunction for a smooth submanifold:
The determinant identity follows locally by adjoining lifts of a quotient frame to a subbundle frame; changing the lifts adds only off-diagonal blocks, so does not change the determinant.
For a smooth divisor, choose reduced local defining functions , with and holomorphic and nowhere zero. The holomorphic line bundle associated to a divisor has local frames , with . The products define its canonical section vanishing on . Along ,
Thus patches to a map , whose kernel is and which is surjective because each reduced defining function has nonzero differential there. Hence . This is the normal bundle of a smooth analytic hypersurface. The divisor construction uses a closed hypersurface: an arbitrary nonclosed embedded hypersurface need not be a divisor. For example, a punctured line in cannot be the support of a divisor, since its missing limit point would also lie in every local holomorphic zero set containing that line.
Let be the section of defining . The intended hypothesis is that it is a regular zero locus: has rank on . In a local trivialization, differentiation of the component functions defines
This is intrinsic: differentiating a change-of-frame matrix introduces terms multiplied by , which vanish on . Its kernel is , so it induces an isomorphism of holomorphic normal bundles. Consequently
This is the normal bundle of a regular zero locus. Here .
Regularity is essential if “vanishing” is read only as equality of underlying sets. On , the section of vanishes set-theoretically on a smooth line . Its derivative vanishes on , and
Thus smoothness of the underlying zero set alone does not establish the claimed normal-bundle isomorphism. The preceding proof applies when the equations define the reduced smooth submanifold, equivalently are transverse to zero.
For Complex projective space, put . At a line , the tangent space is . Quotienting by its scalar maps into yields the Euler sequence
Its determinant gives . For a smooth complete intersection defined regularly by the homogeneous equations, apply the normal-bundle result to :
This is the canonical bundle of a regular projective complete intersection. The same regularity qualification is needed here: the squared-line example would otherwise predict for its canonical bundle, whereas the line has .
The tangent bundle of a complex torus is holomorphically trivial with a flat Hermitian metric. Apply the curvature formula for a holomorphic subbundle to : its determinant dual has semipositive curvature. For a closed smooth hypersurface, adjunction for a smooth submanifold identifies with the restriction of its divisor line bundle. Thus a positive ambient line bundle remains positive on the hypersurface after tensoring by any nonnegative power of the restricted divisor bundle.