A birational version of K-stability for big classes

Abstract

We introduce a theory of uniform K-stability for big line bundles on smooth projective varieties. This extends the existing theory both for varieties with ample line bundles, and for varieties with big anticanonical class. Our main result gives a valuative characterisation of uniform K-stability, through finite collections of divisorial valuations. We further prove that uniform K-stability is preserved under pullbacks and certain pushforwards, which implies that uniform K-stability is well-defined at the level of b-divisors.