Introduction to the Minimal Model Program and the existence of flips

Abstract

The first aim of this note is to give a concise, but complete and self-contained, presentation of the fundamental theorems of Mori theory - the nonvanishing, base point free, rationality and cone theorems - using modern methods of multiplier ideals, Nadel vanishing, and the subadjunction theorem of Kawamata. The second aim is to write up a complete, detailed proof of existence of flips in dimension n assuming the minimal model program with scaling in dimension n-1.