Demailly's conjecture on initial degrees of symbolic powers

Let K\mathbb{K} be an algebraically closed field of characteristic 00. Let XPKNX\subseteq \mathbb{P}^N_{\mathbb{K}} be a set of distinct points, and let a\mathfrak{a} be the defining homogeneous ideal of XX. For a homogeneous ideal JJ, write α(J)\alpha(J) for the least degree of a nonzero homogeneous element of JJ, and write a(s)\mathfrak{a}^{(s)} for its ssth symbolic power. Let rr be any positive integer.

Demailly's conjecture. For every integer s1s\geqslant 1,

α(a(s))sα(a(r))+N1r+N1.\frac{\alpha\left(\mathfrak{a}^{(s)}\right)}{s}\geqslant \frac{\alpha\left(\mathfrak{a}^{(r)}\right)+N-1}{r+N-1}.

This generalizes Chudnovsky's bound by allowing the right-hand side to use the initial degree of an arbitrary symbolic power. The supplied text attributes the generalization to Demailly and gives no evidence of resolution.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Arvind Kumar and Vivek Mukundan, “Symbolic Powers of Classical Varieties”, arXiv:2402.18693 (2025).

Additional references

5 papers in this index state this conjecture (2017–2024). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2009.05022, arXiv:1811.02051, arXiv:1802.08699, arXiv:1701.04848.

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