Bott vanishing for algebraic surfaces

Burt Totaro

Published 2018-12-26Version 1

Bott proved a strong vanishing theorem for sheaf cohomology on projective space. It holds for toric varieties, but not for most other varieties. We prove Bott vanishing for the quintic del Pezzo surface, also known as the moduli space M_{0,5}^bar of 5-pointed stable curves of genus zero. This is the first non-toric Fano variety for which Bott vanishing has been shown, answering a question by Achinger, Witaszek, and Zdanowicz. In another direction, we prove Bott vanishing for many K3 surfaces, including very general K3 surfaces of degree 20 or at least 24. This builds on Beauville and Mukai's work on moduli spaces of K3 surfaces. It would be interesting to determine exactly which K3 surfaces satisfy Bott vanishing.