Fibred surfaces and their unitary rank
摘要
Let f: S → B be a complex fibred surface with fibres of genus g ⩾ 2. Let uf be its unitary rank, i.e., the rank of the maximal unitary summand of the Hodge bundle f*ωf. We prove many new slope inequalities involving uf and some other invariants of the fibration. As applications, we prove a new Xiao-type bound on uf with respect to g for non-isotrivial fibrations: we prove a result in the direction of the Coleman-Oort conjecture: a new constraint on the rank of the (−1, 0) part of the maximal unitary Higgs sub-bundle of a curve generically contained in the Torelli locus.