Kähler cone 2026-10-05
The Kähler cone of a compact Kähler manifold is the open cone of real cohomology classes represented by positive closed forms. If every real degree-two cohomology class has type , density of rational classes supplies a rational Kähler class. An integral multiple is the First Chern class of a positive holomorphic line bundle, and the Kodaira embedding theorem implies projectivity.
Let be a connected compact Riemann surface of genus . Choose an oriented symplectic basis of , with . For a closed complex differential form , write and . The Riemann bilinear relations begin with the identity
To prove it, cut along the chosen cycles to obtain a fundamental polygon . On this simply connected polygon, a closed differential form has a primitive , with . Stokes theorem gives . The two copies of each edge have opposite orientations, and their values of differ by the period acquired in passing between them. Pairing the copies of the and edges gives, respectively, and . Summing proves the identity; the convention fixes its sign.
For holomorphic one-forms , their wedge product is zero because locally both are multiples of . Thus the first holomorphic Riemann bilinear relations is
For a nonzero holomorphic one-form , the second relation follows by applying the bilinear identity to :
In particular, a holomorphic one-form with all -periods zero must vanish. Since , the map taking a holomorphic one-form to its -periods is an isomorphism. We can therefore choose normalized holomorphic one-forms with . Put . The first relation applied to gives , and the second applied to gives for . Consequently
These conclusions make the construction of the Jacobian variety work. Integration identifies the image of in with the period lattice . The real-linear map is invertible: its imaginary part is , and is invertible. Hence is a discrete lattice of full real rank , and
is a compact complex torus, rather than a non-Hausdorff quotient. Changing the symplectic basis changes the displayed coordinates but not this intrinsic quotient.
The Riemann bilinear relations also supply its polarization of a complex torus. Use the Hermitian form , linear in the first argument, and set . Symmetry of gives
Thus is an integral positive Riemann form on a complex torus. Its matrix on the displayed lattice basis is the unimodular symplectic matrix. The corresponding positive holomorphic line bundle, equivalently the one constructed from theta automorphy in Solution 4, gives a principal polarization of a complex torus. By the Kodaira embedding theorem this makes the complex torus projective, hence an abelian variety. The normalization here is important because was chosen linear in its first argument. If , the spaces of holomorphic one-forms and periods are zero and the Jacobian variety is a point.
The Dolbeault theorem identifies with . It vanishes by hypothesis, and complex conjugation in the Hodge decomposition theorem for compact Kähler manifolds makes vanish too. Thus every real degree-two cohomology class has type .
Let be a Kähler form. Choose a rational cohomology class sufficiently close to . More concretely, using harmonic differential forms as representatives for a fixed Kähler metric, the harmonic form representing is close to in every smooth norm: harmonic differential forms constitute a finite-dimensional vector space. It is a real closed form, and is positive if sufficiently close to , by compactness. This is the openness of the Kähler cone. Multiplying by a positive integer gives an integral Kähler class .
The holomorphic exponential sequence contains the cohomology segment
Choose an integral lift of . Exactness gives a holomorphic line bundle having that First Chern class. We must ensure that it has a positive metric, rather than merely a positive representative of its class.
Choose any Hermitian metric and let be its normalized curvature form of a Hermitian holomorphic line bundle. If is the positive form representing , then is an exact real form. The ddbar lemma gives a real smooth function with
Replace by . Its normalized curvature is , so is a positive holomorphic line bundle. The Kodaira embedding theorem now applies: sufficiently many sections of a sufficiently high tensor power define the desired embedding. Therefore