Relative Clifford inequality for varieties fibered by curves

Abstract

We prove a sharp relative Clifford inequality for relatively special divisors on varieties fibered by curves. It generalizes the classical Clifford inequality about a single curve to a family of curves. It yields a geographical inequality for varieties of general type and Albanese-fibered by curves, extending the work of Horikawa, Persson, and Xiao in dimension two to arbitrary dimensions. We also apply it to deduce a slope inequality for some arbitrary dimensional families of curves. It sheds light on the existence of a most general Cornalba-Harris-Xiao type inequality for families of curves. The whole proof is built on a new tree-like filtration for nef divisors on varieties fibered by curves. One key ingredient of the proof is to estimate the sum of all admissible products of nef thresholds with respect to this filtration.