Abstract. The main result of the present article is a (practically optimal) criterion for the pseudoeffectivity of the twisted relative canonical bundles of surjective projective maps. Our theorem has several applications in algebraic geometry; to start with, we obtain the natural analytic generalization of some semipositivity results due to E. Viehweg and F. Campana. As a byproduct, we give a simple and direct proof of a recent result due to C. Hacon-J. McKernan and S. Takayama concerning the extension of twisted pluricanonical forms. More applications will be offered in the sequel of this article. §0 IntroductionIn this article our primary goal is to establish some positivity results concerning the twisted relative canonical bundle of projective morphisms.Let X and Y be non-singular projective manifolds, and let p : X → Y be a surjective projective map, whose relative dimension is equal to n. Consider also a line bundle L over X, endowed with a -possibly singular-metric h = e −φ , such that the curvature current is semipositive. We denote by I(h) the multiplier ideal sheaf of h (see e.g. [10], [21], [25]). Let X y be the fiber of p over a point y ∈ Y , such that y is not a critical value of p. We also assume at first that the restriction of the metric φ to X y is not identically −∞. Under these circumstances, the space of (n, 0) forms L-valued on X y which belong to the multiplier ideal sheaf of the restriction of the metric h is endowed with a natural L 2 -metric as follows(we use the standard abuse of notation in the relation above). Let us consider an orthonormal basis (uRecall that the bundles K X y and K X/Y |X y are isomorphic. Via this identification (which will be detailed in the paragraph 1) the sections above can be used to define 2 Bergman kernels and the pseudoeffectivity of relative canonical bundles a metric on the bundle K X/Y + L restricted to the fiber X y , called the Bergman kernel metric. This definition immediately extends also to fibers such that the metric φ is identically equal to −∞ on the fiber. In this case the Bergman kernel vanishes identically on the fiber, and the Bergman kernel metric is also equal to −∞ there.
LetThen we have the next result, which gives a pseudoeffectivity criterion for the bundle0.1 Theorem. Let p : X → Y be a surjective projective map between smooth manifolds, and let (L, h) be a holomorphic line bundle endowed with a metric h such that:
Then the relative Bergman kernel metric of the bundleIt has semipositive curvature current and extends across X \ X 0 to a metric with semipositive curvature current on all of X.Several versions of the theorem above were established by the first author in his series of articles on the plurisubharmonic variation of the Bergman kernels (see [1], [2], [3] and also [22] for the first results in this direction). Let us point out the main improvements we have got in the present article. In the first place, we allow the metric h to be singular. Secondly, the map p is not supposed to be a smooth fibration-this will be crucial for t...