There are no known failures of Bounded Negativity in characteristic 0. In the light of recent work showing the Bounded Negativity Conjecture fails in positive characteristics for rational surfaces, we propose new characteristic free conjectures as a replacement. We also develop bounds on numerical characteristics of curves constraining their negativity. For example, we show that the $H$-constant of a rational curve $C$ with at most $9$ singular points satisfies $H(C)>-2$ regardless of the characteristic.
We provide a lower bound on the degree of curves of the projective plane $mathbb{P}^2$ passing through the centers of a divisorial valuation $ u$ of $mathbb{P}^2$ with prescribed multiplicities, and an upper bound for the Seshadri-type constant of $ u$, $hat{mu}( u)$, constant that is crucial in the Nagata-type valuative conjecture. We also give some results related to the bounded negativity conjecture concerning those rational surfaces having the projective plane as a relatively minimal model.
Shimura curves on Shimura surfaces have been a candidate for counterexamples to the bounded negativity conjecture. We prove that they do not serve this purpose: there are only finitely many whose self-intersection number lies below a given bound. Previously, this result has been shown in [BHK+13] for compact Hilbert modular surfaces using the Bogomolov-Miyaoka-Yau inequality. Our approach uses equidistribution and works uniformly for all Shimura surfaces.
Studying degenerations of moduli spaces of semistable principal bundles on smooth curves leads to the problem of constructing and studying moduli spaces on singular curves. In this note, we will see that the moduli spaces of $delta$-semistable pseudo bundles on a nodal curve constructed by the first author become, for large values of $delta$, the moduli spaces for semistable singular principal bundles. The latter are reasonable candidates for degenerations and a potential basis of further developments as on irreducible nodal curves. In particular, we find a notion of semistability for principal bundles on reducible nodal curves. The understanding of the asymptotic behavior of $delta$-semistability rests on a lemma from geometric invariant theory. The results will allow the construction of a universal moduli space of semistable singular principal bundles relative to the moduli space $overline{mathcal M}_g$ of stable curves of genus $g$.
In this article we construct a categorical resolution of singularities of an excellent reduced curve $X$, introducing a certain sheaf of orders on $X$. This categorical resolution is shown to be a recollement of the derived category of coherent sheaves on the normalization of $X$ and the derived category of finite length modules over a certain artinian quasi-hereditary ring $Q$ depending purely on the local singularity types of $X$. Using this technique, we prove several statements on the Rouquier dimension of the derived category of coherent sheaves on $X$. Moreover, in the case $X$ is rational and projective we construct a finite dimensional quasi-hereditary algebra $Lambda$ such that the triangulated category of perfect complexes on $X$ embeds into $D^b(Lambda-mathsf{mod})$ as a full subcategory.
We investigate degenerations of syzygy bundles on plane curves over $p$-adic fields. We use Mustafin varieties which are degenerations of projective spaces to find a large family of models of plane curves over the ring of integers such that the special fiber consists of multiple projective lines meeting in one point. On such models we investigate vector bundles whose generic fiber is a syzygy bundle and which become trivial when restricted to each projective line in the special fiber. Hence these syzygy bundles have strongly semistable reduction. This investigation is motivated by the fundamental open problem in $p$-adic Simpson theory to determine the category of Higgs bundles corresponding to continuous representations of the etale fundamental group of a curve. Faltings $p$-adic Simpson correspondence and work of Deninger and the second author shows that bundles with Higgs field zero and potentially strongly semistable reduction fall into this category. Hence the results in the present paper determine a class of syzygy bundles on plane curves giving rise to a $p$-adic local system. We apply our methods to a concrete example on the Fermat curve suggested by Brenner and prove that this bundle has potentially strongly semistable reduction.