Current Developments in Mathematics, 2015
K¨ahler-Einstein metrics and algebraic geometry
Simon Donaldson
Abstract. This paper is a survey of some recent developments in the area described by the title, and follows the lines of the author’s lecture in the 2015 Harvard Current Developments in Mathematics meeting. The main focus of the paper is on the Yau conjecture relating the ex- istence of K¨ahler-Einstein metrics on Fano manifolds to K-stability. We discuss four different proofs of this, by different authors, which have ap- peared over the past few years. These involve an interesting variety of approaches and draw on techniques from different fields.
Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. K-stability 3 3. Riemannian convergence theory and projective embeddings 6 4. Four proofs 11 References 23
1. Introduction General existence questions involving the Ricci curvature of compact K¨ahler manifolds go back at least to work of Calabi in the 1950’s [11], [12]. We begin by recalling some very basic notions in K¨ahler geometry. • All the K¨ahler metrics in a given cohomology class can be described in terms of some fixed reference metric ω0 and a potential function, that is
(1) ω = ω0 + i∂∂φ. • A hermitian holomorphic line bundle over a complex manifold has a unique Chern connection compatible with both structures. A Her- −1 n mitian metric on the anticanonical line bundle KX =Λ TX is the same as a volume form on the manifold. When this volume form is derived from a K¨ahler metric the curvature of the Chern connection