1. Introduction
Early in the 1970s, Carlson and Griffiths [Reference Carlson and Griffiths7, Reference Griffiths13] made significant progress in the study of Nevanlinna theory, which devised the equi-distribution theory for holomorphic mappings from $\mathbb C^{m}$ into complex projective algebraic manifolds intersecting divisors. Later, Griffiths and King [Reference Griffiths and King14, Reference Griffiths13] further extended this theory from $\mathbb C^{m}$ to algebraic manifolds. More generalisations were done by Sakai [Reference Sakai24] in terms of Kodaira dimension, and the singular divisor was considered by Shiffman [Reference Shiffman25]. To begin with, let us review Carlson–Griffiths’ work briefly.
Let V be a complex projective algebraic manifold. Given two holomorphic line bundles $L_{1}, L_{2}$ over $V,$ we set
Let $f:\mathbb C^{m}\rightarrow V$ be a holomorphic mapping. The defect $\delta _{f}(D)$ of f with respect to D is defined by
where $N_{f}(r,D), T_{f}(r,L)$ are respectively the counting function and the characteristic function of f (see definition in Remark 3.3). Carlson–Griffiths proved the following:
Theorem A. Let $f:\mathbb C^{m}\rightarrow V$ be a differentiably nondegenerate holomorphic mapping with $\dim _{\mathbb C}V= m.$ Let $D\in |L|$ be a divisor of simple normal crossing type, where L is a positive line bundle over V. Then
The purpose of this article is to generalize Theorem A to complete Kähler manifolds. The method is to combine the logarithmic derivative lemma (LDL) with a stochastic technique developed by Carne and Atsuji. So, the first task here is to establish the LDL for meromorphic functions on complete Kähler manifolds (see Theorem 1.1), which may be of its own interest. Recall that the first probabilistic proof of Nevanlinna’s second main theorem of meromorphic functions on $\mathbb C$ is due to Carne [Reference Carne8], who reformulated Nevanlinna’s functions in terms of Brownian motions. Later, Atsuji wrote a series of papers to study the second main theorem of meromorphic functions on complete Kähler manifolds; see [Reference Atsuji1, Reference Atsuji2, Reference Atsuji3, Reference Atsuji4]. Recently, Dong–He–Ru [Reference Dong, He and Ru11] re-visited this technique and gave a probabilistic proof of H. Cartan’s theory of holomorphic curves.
Let M be a complete Kähler manifold. In what follows, we state the main results of the article, and some notations will be provided later. For technical reasons, we assume that M is connected and noncompact in this article.
We first establish the following LDL.
Theorem 1.1. Let $\psi $ be a nonconstant meromorphic function on $M.$ Then for any $\delta>0,$ there exist a function $C(o, r, \delta )>0$ (independent of $\psi $ ) and a set $E_{\delta }\subset (1,\infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure such that
holds for $r>1$ outside $E_{\delta },$ where o is a fixed reference point in $M.$
The estimate of term $C(o, r, \delta )$ will be provided when M is nonpositively curved (see (19)). Let ${\text {Ric}}_{M}$ and $\mathscr R_{M}$ be the Ricci curvature tensor and Ricci curvature form of M, respectively. Set
where $R_{M}(x)$ is the pointwise lower bound of the Ricci curvature defined by
Based on the LDL, we obtain a second main theorem as follows:
Theorem 1.2. Let $f:M\rightarrow V$ be a differentiably nondegenerate meromorphic mapping with $\dim _{\mathbb C}M\geq \dim _{\mathbb C}V.$ Let $D\in |L|$ be a divisor of simple normal crossing type, where L is a holomorphic line bundle over V. Then for any $\delta>0,$ there exist a function $C(o, r, \delta )>0$ (independent of $\psi $ ) and a set $E_{\delta }\subset (1,\infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure such that
holds for $r>1$ outside $E_{\delta }.$
If M is nonpositively curved, then we prove the following:
Theorem 1.3. Let $f:M\rightarrow V$ be a differentiably nondegenerate meromorphic mapping with $\dim _{\mathbb C}M\geq \dim _{\mathbb C}V.$ Let $D\in |L|$ be a divisor of simple normal crossing type, where L is a holomorphic line bundle over V. Fix a Hermitian metric $\omega $ on $V.$ Then for any $\delta>0$ ,
holds for $r>1$ outside a set $E_{\delta }\subset (1,\infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure.
Let $\Theta _{f}(D)$ be the simple defect of f with respect to D defined by
where $\overline {N}_{f}(r,D)$ is the simple counting function of f with respect to $D.$
Corollary 1.4 Defect relation
Assume the same conditions as in Theorem 1.3. If f satisfies the growth condition
then
In particular, if $M=\mathbb C^{m}$ with standard Euclidean metric, then $\kappa (r)\equiv 0.$ Hence, Corollary 1.4 implies Theorem A. More generally, we further consider the second main theorem for singular divisors.
Theorem 1.5. Let $f:M\rightarrow V$ be a differentiably nondegenerate meromorphic mapping with $\dim _{\mathbb C}M\geq \dim _{\mathbb C}V.$ Let D be a hypersurface of $V.$ Then for any $\delta>0$ ,
holds for $r>1$ outside a set $E_{\delta }\subset (1,\infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure.
2. Preliminaries
We introduce some basics concerning the Poincaré–Lelong formula, Brownian motion and Ricci curvature. We refer the reader to [Reference Bass5, Reference Bishop and Crittenden6, Reference Chung9, Reference Griffiths and King14, Reference Hsu16, Reference Ikeda and Watanabe17, Reference Itô and McKean18, Reference Port and Stone22].
2.1. Poincaré–Lelong formula
Let M be an m-dimensional complex manifold. A divisor D on M is said to be of normal crossings if D is locally defined by an equation $z_{1}\cdots z_{k}=0$ for a local holomorphic coordinate system $z_{1},\cdots ,z_{m}.$ Additionally, if every irreducible component of D is smooth, one says that D is of simple normal crossings. A holomorphic line bundle $L\rightarrow M$ is said to be Hermitian if L is equipped with a Hermitian metric $h=(\{h_{\alpha }\},\{U_{\alpha }\}),$ where
are positive smooth functions such that $h_{\beta }=|g_{\alpha \beta }|^{2}h_{\alpha }$ on $U_{\alpha }\cap U_{\beta },$ and $\{g_{\alpha \beta }\}$ is a transition function system of $L.$ Let $\{e_{\alpha }\}$ be a local holomorphic frame of L; then we have $\|e_{\alpha }\|^{2}_{h}=h_{\alpha }.$ A Hermitian metric h of L defines a global, closed and smooth (1,1)-form $-dd^{c}\log h$ on $M,$ where
We call $-dd^{c}\log h$ the Chern form denoted by $c_{1}(L,h)$ associated with metric $h,$ which determines a Chern class $c_{1}(L)\in H^{2}_{{\text {DR}}}(M,\mathbb R)$ ; $c_{1}(L,h)$ is also called the curvature form of $L.$ If $c_{1}(L)>0,$ namely, there exists a Hermitian metric h such that $-dd^{c}\log h>0,$ then we say that L is positive, written as $L>0.$
Let $T M$ denote the holomorphic tangent bundle of $M.$ The canonical line bundle of M is defined by
with transition functions $g_{\alpha \beta }=\det (\partial z^{\beta }_{j}/\partial z^{\alpha }_{i})$ on $U_{\alpha }\cap U_{\beta }.$ Given a Hermitian metric h on $K_{M}$ , it well defines a global, positive and smooth $(m,m)$ -form
on $M,$ which is therefore a volume form of $M.$ The Ricci form of $\Omega $ is defined by ${\text {Ric}}\Omega =dd^{c}\log h.$ Clearly, $c_{1}(K_{M},h)=-{\text {Ric}}\Omega .$ Conversely, if we let $\Omega $ be a volume form on M which is compact, there exists a unique Hermitian metric h on $K_{M}$ such that $dd^{c}\log h={\text {Ric}} \Omega .$
Let $H^{0}(M,L)$ denote the vector space of holomorphic global sections of L over M. For any $s\in H^{0}(M,L)$ , the divisor $D_{s}$ is well defined by $D_{s}\cap U_{\alpha }=(s)|_{U_{\alpha }}$ . Denote by $|L|$ the complete linear system of all effective divisors $D_{s}$ with $s\in H^{0}(M,L).$ Let D be a divisor on M; then D defines a holomorphic line bundle $L_{D}$ over M in such manner: let $(\{g_{\alpha }\},\{U_{\alpha }\})$ be the local defining function system of D; then the transition system is given by $\{g_{\alpha \beta }=g_{\alpha }/g_{\beta }\}.$ Note that $\{g_{\alpha }\}$ defines a global meromorphic section on M written as $s_{D}$ of $L_{D}$ over $M,$ called the canonical section associated with $D.$
Lemma 2.1 Poincaré–Lelong formula, [Reference Carlson and Griffiths7]
Let $L\rightarrow M$ be a holomorphic line bundle equipped with a Hermitian metric $h,$ and let s be a holomorphic section of L over M with zero divisor $D_{s}.$ Then $\log \|s\|_{h}$ is locally integrable on M and defines a current satisfying
2.2. Brownian motions
Let $(M,g)$ be a Riemannian manifold with the Laplace–Beltrami operator $\Delta _{M}$ associated with metric $g.$ A Brownian motion $X_{t}$ in M is a heat diffusion process generated by $\Delta _{M}/2$ with transition density function $p(t,x,y)$ being the minimal positive fundamental solution of the heat equation
In particular, when $M=\mathbb R^{m}$ ,
Let $X_{t}$ be the Brownian motion in M with generator $\Delta _{M}/2.$ We denote by $\mathbb P_{x}$ the law of $X_{t}$ starting from $x\in M$ and denote by $\mathbb E_{x}$ the expectation with respect to $\mathbb P_{x}$ .
A. Co-area formula
Let D be a bounded domain with the smooth boundary $\partial D$ in $M.$ Denote by $d\pi ^{\partial D}_{x}(y)$ the harmonic measure on $\partial D$ with respect to x and by $g_{D}(x,y)$ the Green function of $\Delta _{M}/2$ for D with Dirichlet boundary condition and a pole at x; that is,
For each $\phi \in \mathscr {C}_{\flat }(D)$ (space of bounded and continuous functions on D), the co-area formula [Reference Bass5] says that
where $dV$ is the Riemannian volume element on $M.$ From Proposition 2.8 in [Reference Bass5], we have the relation of harmonic measures and hitting times as follows:
for $\psi \in \mathscr {C}(\overline {D})$ . The co-area formulas (3) and (2) still work when $\phi , \psi $ are of a pluripolar set of singularities.
B. Itô formula
The following identity is called the Itô formula (see [Reference Atsuji1, Reference Ikeda and Watanabe17, Reference Itô and McKean18]):
for $u\in \mathscr {C}_{\flat }^{2}(M)$ (space of bounded $\mathscr {C}^{2}$ -class functions on M), where $B_{t}$ is the standard Brownian motion in $\mathbb R$ and $\nabla _{M}$ is the gradient operator on M. It follows the Dynkin formula
for a stopping time T such that each term makes sense. The Dynkin formula still works if u is of a pluripolar set of singularities.
2.3. Ricci curvatures
Let $(M,g)$ be a Kähler manifold of complex dimension m. Write the Ricci curvature of M in the form ${\text {Ric}}_{M}=\sum _{i,j}R_{i\bar {j}}dz_{i}\otimes d\bar {z}_{j},$ where
A well-known theorem by S. S. Chern asserts that the Ricci form of M
is a real and closed (1,1)-form which represents a cohomology class of the de Rham cohomology group $H^{2}_{{\text {DR}}}(M,\mathbb R).$ Let $s_{M}$ be the scalar curvature of M defined by
where $(g^{i\bar j})$ is the inverse of $(g_{i\bar j}).$ Since M is Kählerian, then by
acting on a function, which yields from (4) that
Lemma 2.2. Let $R_{M}$ be the pointwise lower bound of Ricci curvature of M. Then
Proof. Fix a point $x\in M$ ; we take local holomorphic coordinates $z_{1}, \cdots , z_{m}$ near x such that $g_{i\bar {j}}(x)=\delta ^{i}_{j}.$ Then we obtain
which proves the lemma.
3. First main theorem
We first extend the notion of Nevanlinna’s functions to the general Kähler manifolds and then give the first main theorem of meromorphic mappings on Kähler manifolds. Let $(M,g)$ be a Kähler manifold of complex dimension $m,$ the associated Kähler form is defined by
Fix $o\in M$ as a reference point. Denote by $B_{o}(r)$ the geodesic ball centred at o with radius r and by $S_{o}(r)$ the geodesic sphere centred at o with radius $r.$ By Sard’s theorem, $S_{o}(r)$ is a submanifold of M for almost all $r>0.$ Also, one denotes by $g_{r}(o,x)$ the Green function of $\Delta _{M}/2$ for $B_{o}(r)$ with Dirichlet boundary condition and a pole at o and by $d\pi _{o}^{r}(x)$ the harmonic measure on $S_{o}(r)$ with respect to $o.$
3.1. Nevanlinna’s functions
Let
be a meromorphic mapping to a compact complex manifold $N,$ which means that f is defined by such a holomorphic mapping $f_{0}:M\setminus I\rightarrow N,$ where I is some analytic subset of M with $\dim _{\mathbb C}I\leq m-2,$ called the indeterminacy set of f such that the closure $\overline {G(f_{0})}$ of the graph of $f_{0}$ is an analytic subset of $M\times N$ and the natural projection $\overline {G(f_{0})}\rightarrow M$ is proper. Let $\eta $ be a (1,1)-form on M, we use the following convenient notation:
Given a smooth (1,1)-form $\omega $ on $N,$ since I is an indeterminacy set of $f,$ one could confirm the local integrability of $g_{r}(o,x)e_{f^{*}\omega }(x)$ on M with respect to measure $\alpha ^{m}$ by using the arguments in Noguchi–Ochiai [[Reference Noguchi and Ochiai20], Subsection 5.2]. We define the characteristic function of f with respect to $\omega $ by
where $dV=\pi ^{m}\alpha ^{m}/m!$ is the Riemannian volume element on $M.$ Let $(L, h)$ be a Hermitian line bundle over $N.$ By the compactness of N, we well define
up to a bounded term. We further remark that the indeterminacy set I does not affect the local integrability of integrands in those quantities treated and hence the definitions of the following introduced proximity function $m_{f}(r, D)$ and counting function $N_{f}(r, D)$ (including Nevanlinna’s functions in Section 5) make sense. We refer the reader to Noguchi–Ochiai [[Reference Noguchi and Ochiai20], Subsection 5.2].
In what follows, we define the proximity function and counting function.
Lemma 3.1. $\Delta _{M}\log (h\circ f)$ is well defined on $M\setminus I$ satisfying
Hence, we have
Proof. Let $(\{U_{\alpha }\},\{e_{\alpha }\})$ be a local trivialisation covering of $(L,h)$ with transition function system $\{g_{\alpha \beta }\}$ of local holomorphic frames $\{e_{\alpha }\}.$ On $U_{\alpha }\cap U_{\beta },$
We get
on $f^{-1}(U_{\alpha }\cap U_{\beta })\setminus I.$ Notice that $g_{\alpha \beta }$ is holomorphic and nowhere vanishing on $U_{\alpha }\cap U_{\beta }$ ; we see that $\log |g_{\alpha \beta }\circ f|^{2}$ is harmonic on $f^{-1}(U_{\alpha }\cap U_{\beta })\setminus I.$ So, $\Delta _{M}\log (h_{\beta }\circ f)=\Delta _{M}\log (h_{\alpha }\circ f)$ on $f^{-1}(U_{\alpha }\cap U_{\beta })\setminus I.$ Thus, $\Delta _{M}\log (h\circ f)$ is well defined on $M\setminus I.$ Fix $x\in M$ ; then we choose a normal holomorphic coordinate system z near x in the sense that $g_{i\bar {j}}(x)=\delta _{j}^{i}$ and all of the first-order derivatives of $g_{i\overline {j}}$ vanish at $x.$ Then at $x,$ we have
as well as
where ‘tr’ means the trace of a square matrix. Indeed, by (5),
at $x.$ This proves the lemma.
Take $0\not =s\in H^{0}(N, L).$ Locally, we can write $s=\tilde s e,$ where e is a local holomorphic frame of $L.$ Then
Using similar arguments as in the proof of Lemma 3.1, we get
Lemma 3.2. Let $s\in H^{0}(N,L)$ with zero divisor $D.$ If $(L,h)\geq 0,$ then
$(i)\, \log \|s\circ f\|^{2}$ is locally the difference of two plurisubharmonic functions, and hence $\log \|s\circ f\|^{2}\in \mathscr {L}_{loc}(M).$
$(ii)\, dd^{c}[\log \|s\circ f\|^{2}]=f^{*}D-f^{*}c_{1}(L,h)$ in the sense of currents.
Proof. Locally, we can write $s=\tilde se,$ where e is a local holomorphic frame of L with $h=\|e\|^{2}.$ Then
Since $c_{1}(L,h)\geq 0,$ one obtains $-dd^{c}\log (h\circ f)\geq 0.$ Indeed, $\tilde {s}$ is holomorphic; hence, $dd^{c}\log |\tilde {s}\circ f|^{2}\geq 0.$ This follows $(i)$ . The Poincaré–Lelong formula implies that $dd^{c}[\log |\tilde {s}\circ f|^{2}]=f^{*}D$ in the sense of currents; hence, $(ii)$ holds.
Let $D\in |L|,$ where $(L, h)$ is a Hermitian positive line bundle over $N.$ We define the proximity function of f with respect to D by
Write
as the difference of two pluri-subharmonic functions. It defines a Riesz charge $d\mu =d\mu _{1}-d\mu _{2},$ where $d\mu _{2}$ is a Riesz measure for $f^{*}D.$ The counting function of f with respect to D is defined by
Similarly, we can define $\overline {N}_{f}(r,D):=N(r, {\text {Supp}}f^{*}D).$
3.2. Probabilistic expressions of Nevanlinna’s functions
Let us formulate Nevanlinna’s functions in terms of Brownian motion $X_{t}$ . Since I is a thin analytic subset contained in some pluripolar subset of $M, X_{t}$ hits I in probability 0, I will not affect the expectation of those quantities involving f treated with respect to probability measure $d\mathbb P_{o}.$ We define the stopping time
Set $\omega :=-dd^{c}\log h.$ By the co-area formula, we have
By the relation between harmonic measures and hitting times, it gives that
For the counting function $N_{f}(r,D),$ we use an alternative probabilistic expression (see [Reference Atsuji1, Reference Atsuji4, Reference Carne8, Reference Elworthy, Li and Yor12]) as follows:
Remark 3.3. The definitions of Nevanlinna’s functions in the above are natural extensions of the classical ones. To see that, we recall the $\mathbb C^{m}$ -case:
where o is taken as the coordinate origin of $\mathbb C^{m},$ and
Notice the following facts:
where $\omega _{2m-1}$ is the volume of unit sphere in $\mathbb R^{2m}.$ By integration by part, it is not difficult to see that they are a match.
3.3. First main theorem
Let N be a complex projective algebraic manifold. There is a very ample holomorphic line bundle $L^{\prime }$ over $V.$ Equip $L^{\prime }$ with a Hermitian metric $h^{\prime }$ such that $\omega ^{\prime }:=-dd^{c}\log h^{\prime }>0.$ For an arbitrary holomorphic line bundle $L\rightarrow N$ equipped with a Hermitian metric $h,$ whose Chern form says $\omega :=-dd^{c}\log h,$ we can pick $k\in \mathbb N$ large enough so that $\omega +k\omega ^{\prime }>0.$ Take the natural product Hermitian metric $\|\cdot \|$ on $L\otimes L^{\prime \otimes k}$ ; then the Chern form is $\omega +k\omega ^{\prime }$ . Choose $\sigma \in H^{0}(M,L^{\prime })$ such that $f(M)\not \subset {\text {Supp}}(\sigma ).$ Due to $\omega +k\omega ^{\prime }>0$ and $\omega ^{\prime }>0,$ we see that $\log \|(s_{D}\otimes \sigma ^{k})\circ f\|^{2}$ and $\log \|\sigma \circ f\|^{2}$ are locally the difference of two pluri-subharmonic functions, where $D\in |L|$ . Thus,
is locally the difference of two pluri-subharmonic functions. Hence, $m_{f}(r,D)$ can be defined.
We have the first main theorem (FMT).
Theorem 3.4 FMT
Assume that $f(o)\not \in D.$ Then
Proof. Since I is an indeterminacy set and $X_{t}$ meets I in probability 0, we may ignore $I.$ Set
Due to the definition of $T_{\lambda }, X_{t}$ does not hit ${\text {Supp}}f^{*}D$ when $0\leq t\leq \tau _{r}\wedge T_{\lambda }.$ By Dynkin’s formula, it follows that
where $\tau _{r}\wedge T_{\lambda }=\mathop {\mathrm {min}}\{\tau _{r}, T_{\lambda }\}.$ Note that $\Delta _{M}\log |\tilde {s}_{D}\circ f|=0$ outside $ f^{*}D$ . We see that
for $t\in [0,T_{\lambda }].$ Thus, (7) becomes
The monotone convergence theorem leads to
as $\lambda \rightarrow \infty .$ We handle the first term in (7) and write it as two parts:
Using the monotone convergence theorem again,
as $\lambda \rightarrow \infty .$ Finally, we deal with $\mathrm {II}.$ By the definition of $T_{\lambda },$ we see that
as $\lambda \rightarrow \infty .$ Putting the above together, we show the theorem.
4. Logarithmic derivative lemma
The LDL is an important tool in derivation of the second main theorem. The goal of this section is to prove the LDL for Kähler manifolds (i.e., Theorem 1.1).
4.1. Logarithmic derivative lemma
Let $(M,g)$ be an m-dimensional complete Kähler manifold and $\nabla _{M}$ be the gradient operator on M associated with $g.$ Let $X_{t}$ be the Brownian motion in M with generator $\Delta _{M}/2.$
Lemma 4.1 Calculus lemma, [Reference Atsuji1]
Let $k\geq 0$ be a locally integrable function on M such that it is locally bounded at $o\in M.$ Then for any $\delta>0,$ there exist a function $C(o, r, \delta )>0$ (independent of k) and a set $E_{\delta }\subset [0, \infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure such that
holds for $r>1$ outside $E_{\delta }.$
Let $\psi $ be a meromorphic function on $M.$ The norm of the gradient of $\psi $ is defined by
where $(g^{i\overline {j}})$ is the inverse of $(g_{i\overline {j}}).$ Locally, we write $\psi =\psi _{1}/\psi _{0},$ where $\psi _{0},\psi _{1}$ are holomorphic functions so that ${\text {codim}}_{\mathbb C}(\psi _{0}=\psi _{1}=0)\geq 2$ if $\dim _{\mathbb C}M\geq 2.$ Identify $\psi $ with a meromorphic mapping into $\mathbb P^{1}(\mathbb C)$ by $x\mapsto [\psi _{0}(x):\psi _{1}(x)].$ The characteristic function of $\psi $ with respect to the Fubini–Study form $\omega _{FS}$ on $\mathbb P^{1}(\mathbb C)$ is defined by
Let $i:\mathbb C\hookrightarrow \mathbb P^{1}(\mathbb C)$ be an inclusion defined by $z\mapsto [1:z].$ Via the pullback by $i,$ we have a (1,1)-form $i^{*}\omega _{FS}=dd^{c}\log (1+|\zeta |^{2})$ on $\mathbb C,$ where $\zeta :=w_{1}/w_{0}$ and $[w_{0}:w_{1}]$ is the homogeneous coordinate system of $\mathbb P^{1}(\mathbb C).$ The characteristic function of $\psi $ with respect to $i^{*}\omega _{FS}$ is defined by
Clearly,
We adopt the spherical distance $\|\cdot ,\cdot \|$ on $\mathbb P^{1}(\mathbb C)$ ; then the proximity function of $\psi $ with respect to $a\in \mathbb P^{1}(\mathbb C)=\mathbb C\cup \{\infty \}$ is defined by
Again, set
Using similar arguments as in the proof of Theorem 3.4, we easily show that $\hat {T}_{\psi }(r,\omega _{FS})=\hat {m}_{\psi }(r,a)+\hat {N}_{\psi }(r,a)+O(1).$ We also define Nevanlinna’s characteristic function
where
We have
On $\mathbb P^{1}(\mathbb C),$ we take a singular metric
A direct computation shows that
Set
Invoking (10), we obtain
Lemma 4.2. We have
Proof. Using Fubini’s theorem,
The proof is completed.
Lemma 4.3. Assume that $\psi (x)\not \equiv 0.$ For any $\delta>0,$ there are $C(o, r, \delta )>0$ independent of $\psi $ and $E_{\delta }\subset (1,\infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure such that
holds for $r>1$ outside $E_{\delta }.$
Proof. By Jensen’s inequality, it is clear that
By Lemma 4.1 and the co-area formula, there is $C(o, r, \delta )>0$ such that
where Lemma 4.2 and (11) are applied. Modify $C(o, r, \delta )$ such that the term $O(1)$ is removed; then we get the desired inequality.
Define
Now we prove Theorem 1.1.
Proof. On the one hand,
Lemma 4.3 implies that
On the other hand, by Jensen’s inequality and (9),
Replacing $C(o, r, \delta )$ by $C^{2}(o, r, \delta )$ and combining the above, the theorem is proved.
4.2. Estimate of $C(o, r, \delta )$
Let M be a complete Kähler manifold of nonpositive sectional curvature. Indeed, we let $\kappa $ be defined by (1). Clearly, $\kappa $ is a nonpositive, nonincreasing and continuous function on $[0,\infty ).$ Treat the ordinary differential equation
on $[0,\infty ).$ Now compare (12) with $y^{\prime \prime }(t)+\kappa (0)y(t)=0$ under the same initial conditions; we see that G can be estimated simply as
This follows that
On the other hand, we rewrite (12) as the form
Since $G(t)\geq t$ is increasing, the decrease and nonpositivity of $\kappa $ imply that for each fixed $t, G$ must satisfy one of the following two inequalities:
By virtue of $G(t)\rightarrow 0$ as $t\rightarrow 0,$ by integration, G is bounded from above by
In what follows, one assumes that M is simply connected. The purpose of this section is to show the following LDL by estimating $C(o, r, \delta ).$
Theorem 4.4 LDL
Let $\psi $ be a nonconstant meromorphic function on M. Then
where $\kappa $ is defined by $(1).$
We need some lemmas.
Lemma 4.5 [Reference Atsuji4]
Let $\eta>0$ be a number. Then there is a constant $C>0$ such that
holds for $r>\eta $ and $x\in B_{o}(r)\setminus \overline {B_{o}(\eta )},$ where G is defined by (12).
Lemma 4.6 [Reference Debiard, Gaveau and Mazet10, Reference Hsu16]
Let M be a simply connected, nonpositively curved and complete Hermitian manifold of complex dimension m. Then
where $g_{r}(o,x)$ denotes the Green function of $\Delta _{M}/2$ for $B_{o}(r)$ with Dirichlet boundary condition and a pole at $o,$ $d\pi _{o}^{r}(x)$ is the harmonic measure on $S_{o}(r)$ with respect to $o, \omega _{2m-1}$ is the Euclidean volume of a unit sphere in $\mathbb R^{2m}$ and $d\sigma _{r}(x)$ is the induced Riemannian volume element on $S_{o}(r).$
Lemma 4.7 Borel lemma, [Reference Ru23]
Let T be a strictly positive nondecreasing function of $\mathscr {C}^{1}$ -class on $(0,\infty ).$ Let $\gamma>0$ be a number such that $T(\gamma )\geq e$ and $\phi $ be a strictly positive nondecreasing function such that
Then, the inequality
holds for $r\geq \gamma $ outside a set of Lebesgue measure not exceeding $c_{\phi }.$ Particularly, take $\phi (T)=T^{\delta }$ for a number $\delta>0$ ; then we have $T^{\prime }(r)\leq T^{1+\delta }(r)$ holds for $r>0$ outside a set $E_{\delta }\subset (0,\infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure.
Now we prove the following so-called calculus lemma (see also [Reference Atsuji4]) which gives an estimate of $C(o,r,\delta ).$
Lemma 4.8 Calculus lemma
Let $k\geq 0$ be a locally integrable function on M such that it is locally bounded at $o\in M.$ Then for any $\delta>0,$ there is a constant $C>0$ independent of $k,\delta $ and a set $E_{\delta }\subset (1,\infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure such that
holds for $r>1$ outside $E_{\delta },$ where $\kappa $ is defined by $(1).$
Proof. By Lemma 4.5 and Lemma 4.6 with (13), we get
and
where $\omega _{2m-1}$ denotes the Euclidean volume of a unit sphere in $\mathbb R^{2m}$ and $d\sigma _{r}$ is the induced volume measure on $S_{o}(r).$ Hence,
and
Put
Then
A simple computation shows that
By this with (15),
Using Lemma 4.7 twice, for any $\delta>0$ we have
holds outside a set $E_{\delta }\subset (1,\infty )$ of finite Lebesgue measure. Using (16)–(18) and (14), it is not hard to conclude that
with $C=1/C_{0}>0$ being a constant independent of $k,\delta .$
Lemma 4.8 implies an estimate
Thus, we get
We prove Theorem 4.4.
5. Second main theorem
5.1. Meromorphic mappings into $\mathbb P^{n}(\mathbb C)$
Let $\psi :M\rightarrow \mathbb P^{n}(\mathbb C)$ be a meromorphic mapping from Kähler manifold M into $\mathbb P^{n}(\mathbb C)$ ; that is, there is an open covering $\{U_{\alpha }\}$ of M such that $\psi $ has a local representation $[\psi _{0}^{\alpha }:\cdots :\psi _{n}^{\alpha }]$ on each $U_{\alpha },$ where $\psi ^{\alpha }_{0},\cdots ,\psi ^{\alpha }_{n}$ are holomorphic functions on $U_{\alpha }$ satisfying
Let $[w_{0}:\cdots :w_{n}]$ denote the homogeneous coordinate of $\mathbb P^{n}(\mathbb C).$ Assume that $w_{0}\circ \psi \not \equiv 0.$ Let $i:\mathbb C^{n}\hookrightarrow \mathbb P^{n}(\mathbb C)$ be an inclusion given by $(z_{1},\cdots ,z_{n})\mapsto [1:z_{1}:\cdots :z_{n}].$ Clearly, $\omega _{FS}$ induces a (1,1)-form $i^{*}\omega _{FS}=dd^{c}\log (|\zeta _{0}|^{2}+|\zeta _{1}|^{2}+\cdots +|\zeta _{n}|^{2})$ on $\mathbb C^{n},$ where $\zeta _{j}:=w_{j}/w_{0}$ for $0\leq j\leq n.$ The characteristic function of $\psi $ with respect to $i^{*}\omega _{FS}$ is well defined by
Clearly,
The co-area formula leads to
Note that the pole divisor of $\zeta _{j}\circ \psi $ is pluripolar. By Dynkin’s formula,
Theorem 5.1. We have
Proof. On the one hand,
On the other hand,
We conclude the proof.
Corollary 5.2. We have
Let V be a complex projective algebraic variety and $\mathbb {C}(V)$ be the field of rational functions defined on V over $\mathbb C.$ Let $V\hookrightarrow \mathbb P^{N}(\mathbb C)$ be a holomorphic embedding and $H_{V}$ be the restriction of the hyperplane line bundle H over $\mathbb P^{N}(\mathbb C)$ to $V.$ Denote by $[w_{0}:\cdots :w_{N}]$ the homogeneous coordinate system of $\mathbb P^{N}(\mathbb C)$ and assume that $w_{0}\neq 0$ without loss of generality. Notice that the restriction $\{\zeta _{j}:=w_{j}/w_{0}\}$ to V gives a transcendental base of $\mathbb {C}(V).$ Hence, any $\phi \in \mathbb C(V)$ can be represented by a rational function in $\zeta _{1},\cdots ,\zeta _{N}$ ,
Theorem 5.3. Let $f:M\rightarrow V$ be an algebraically nondegenerate meromorphic mapping. Then for $\phi \in \mathbb C(V),$ there exists a constant $C>0$ such that
Proof. Assume that $w_{0}\circ f\not \equiv 0$ without loss of generality. Since $Q_{j}$ is rational, there is constant $C^{\prime }>0$ such that $T(r,\phi \circ f)\leq C^{\prime }\sum _{j=1}^{N} T(r,\zeta _{j}\circ f)+O(1).$ By Corollary 5.2, $ T(r,\zeta _{j}\circ f) \leq T_{f}(r,H_{V})+O(1).$ This proves the theorem.
Corollary 5.4. Let $f:M\rightarrow V$ be an algebraically nondegenerate meromorphic mapping. Fix a positive $(1,1)$ -form $\omega $ on $V.$ Then for any $\phi \in \mathbb C(V),$ there is a constant $C>0$ such that
Proof. The compactness of V and Theorem 5.3 deduce the corollary.
5.2. Estimate of $\mathbb E_{o}[\tau_{r}]$
Now we assume M is a simply connected complete Kähler manifold of nonpositive sectional curvature, and let $X_{t}$ be the Brownian motion in M with generator $\Delta _{M}/2$ started at $o.$ Recall that $\dim _{\mathbb C}M=m, \tau _{r}=\inf \{t>0:X_{t}\not \in B_{o}(r)\}.$
Lemma 5.5. We have
Proof. The argument follows essentially from Atsuji [Reference Atsuji4], but here we provide a simpler proof albeit a rougher estimate. We refer the reader to [Reference Atsuji4] for a better estimate that $\mathbb E_{o}[\tau _{r}]\leq r^{2}/2m.$ Let $X_{t}$ be the Brownian motion in M started at $o\not =o_{1},$ where $o_{1}\in B_{o}(r).$ Let $r_{1}(x)$ be the distance function of x from $o_{1}.$ Apply Itô’s formula to $r_{1}(x)$ ,
where $B_{t}$ is the standard Brownian motion in $\mathbb R$ and $L_{t}$ is a local time on the cut locus of $o,$ an increasing process which increases only at the cut loci of $o.$ Since M is simply connected and nonpositively curved,
By (20), we arrive at
Let $t=\tau _{r}$ and take expectation on both sides of the above inequality; then it yields that
Let $o^{\prime }\rightarrow o,$ and we are led to the conclusion.
5.3. Second main theorem
Let M be a complete Kähler manifold of nonpositive sectional curvature. Consider the (analytic) universal covering
Via the pullback by $\pi , \tilde {M}$ can be equipped with the induced metric from the metric of $M.$ So, under this metric, $\tilde {M}$ becomes a simply connected complete Kähler manifold of nonpositive sectional curvature. Take a diffusion process $\tilde {X}_{t}$ in $\tilde {M}$ such that $X_{t}=\pi (\tilde {X}_{t}),$ where $X_{t}$ is the Brownian motion started at $o\in M$ . Then $\tilde {X}_{t}$ is a Brownian motion generated by $\Delta _{\tilde {M}}/2$ induced from the pullback metric. Let $\tilde {X}_{t}$ start at $\tilde {o}\in \tilde {M}$ with $o=\pi (\tilde {o}).$ Then
for $\phi \in \mathscr {C}_{\flat }(M).$ Set
where $B_{\tilde {o}}(r)$ is a geodesic ball centred at $\tilde {o}$ with radius r in $\tilde {M}.$ If necessary, one can extend the filtration in probability space where $(X_{t},\mathbb P_{o})$ are defined so that $\tilde {\tau }_{r}$ is a stopping time with respect to a filtration where the stochastic calculus of $X_{t}$ works. By the above arguments, we may assume M is simply connected by lifting f to the universal covering.
Let V be a complex projective algebraic manifold with complex dimension $n\leq m=\dim _{\mathbb C}M,$ and let $L\rightarrow V$ be a holomorphic line bundle. Let a divisor $D\in |L|$ be of simple normal crossing type; then one can express $D=\sum _{j=1}^{q}D_{j}$ as the union of irreducible components. Equip $L_{D_{j}}$ with a Hermitian metric which then induces a natural Hermitian metric h on $L=\otimes _{j=1}^{q}L_{D_{j}}.$ Fix a Hermitian metric form $\omega $ on V, which gives a (smooth) volume form $\Omega :=\omega ^{n}$ on $V.$ Pick $s_{j}\in H^{0}(V,L_{D_{j}})$ with $(s_{j})=D_{j}$ and $\|s_{j}\|<1.$ On V, one defines a singular volume form
Set
Note that
A direct computation leads to
in the sense of currents, where $\mathscr {R}_{M}=-dd^{c}\log \det (g_{i\bar j}).$ This follows that
We now prove Theorem 1.2.
Proof. By Ru–Wong’s arguments (see [Reference Ru23], pp. 231–233), the simple normal crossing type of D implies that there exists a finite open covering $\{U_{\lambda }\}$ of V together with rational functions $w_{\lambda 1},\cdots ,w_{\lambda n}$ on V for $\lambda $ such that $w_{\lambda 1},\cdots $ are holomorphic on $U_{\lambda }$ as well as
In addition, we can require $L_{D_{j}}|_{U_{\lambda }}\cong U_{\lambda }\times \mathbb C$ for $\lambda ,j.$ On $U_{\lambda },$ we get
where $\Phi $ is given by (21) and $e_{\lambda }$ is a smooth positive function. Let $\{\phi _{\lambda }\}$ be a partition of unity subordinate to $\{U_{\lambda }\}$ ; then $\phi _{\lambda } e_{\lambda }$ is bounded on $V.$ Set
Put $f_{\lambda k}=w_{\lambda k}\circ f$ ; then on $f^{-1}(U_{\lambda })$ we obtain
Set
which arrives at (22). Clearly, we have $\xi =\sum _{\lambda } \xi _{\lambda }.$ Again, set
which follows that
For each $\lambda $ and any $x\in f^{-1}(U_{\lambda }),$ take a local holomorphic coordinate system z around $x.$ Since $\phi _{\lambda }\circ f\cdot e_{\lambda }\circ f$ is bounded, it is not very hard to see from (23) and (24) that $\xi _{\lambda }$ is bounded from above by $P_{\lambda },$ where $P_{\lambda }$ is a polynomial in
This yields that
Thus, we conclude that
on $M.$ On the one hand,
due to the co-area formula and Dynkin’s formula. Hence, by (22) we have
On the other hand, since $f_{\lambda k}$ is the pullback of rational function $w_{\lambda k}$ on V by f, Corollary 5.4 implies that
Using (26) and (29) with Theorem 1.1,
In the meanwhile, Lemma 4.1 and (25) imply
By this with (28), we prove the theorem.
We proceed to prove Theorem 1.3.
Lemma 5.6. Let $\kappa $ be defined by $(1).$ If M is nonpositively curved, then
Proof. Lemma 2.2 implies that $0\geq s_{M}\geq mR_{M}.$ By the co-area formula,
Since $\mathbb E_{o}[\tau _{r}]\leq 2r^{2}/(2m-1)$ by Lemma 5.5, we prove the lemma.
Proof. With the estimate of $C(o, r, \delta )$ given by (19) and estimate of $T(r,\mathscr {R}_{M})$ given by Lemma 5.6, Theorem 1.3 follows from Theorem 1.2.
Corollary 5.7 Carlson–Griffiths–King, [Reference Carlson and Griffiths7, Reference Griffiths and King14]; Noguchi, [Reference Noguchi19]
Let $f:\mathbb C^{m}\rightarrow V$ be a differentiably nondegenerate meromorphic mapping with $\dim _{\mathbb C} V\leq m.$ Let D be a divisor of simple normal crossing type, where L is a holomorphic line bundle over V. Fix a Hermitian metric $\omega $ on $V.$ Then
6. Second main theorem for singular divisors
We extend the second main theorem for divisors of simply normal crossing type to general divisors. Given a hypersurface D of a complex projective algebraic manifold V, let S denote the set of the points of D at which D has a nonnormal crossing singularity. By Hironaka’s resolution of singularities (see [Reference Hironaka15]), there exists a proper modification
such that $\tilde {V} \setminus \tilde {S}$ is biholomorphic to $V\setminus S$ under $\tau $ and $\tilde {D}$ is only of normal crossing singularities, where $\tilde {S}=\tau ^{-1}(S)$ and $\tilde {D}=\tau ^{-1}(D)$ . Let $\hat {D}=\overline {\tilde {D}\setminus \tilde {S}}$ be the closure of $\tilde {D}\setminus \tilde {S}$ and $\tilde {S}_{j}$ be the irreducible components of $\tilde {S}.$ Put
where $R_{\tau }$ is ramification divisor of $\tau $ and $p_{j},q_{j}>0$ are integers. Again, set
We endow $L_{S^{*}}$ with a Hermitian metric $\|\cdot \|$ and take a holomorphic section $\sigma $ of $L_{S^{*}}$ with ${\text {Div}}\sigma =(\sigma )=S^{*}$ and $\|\sigma \|<1.$ Let
be a meromorphic mapping from a complete Kähler manifold M into V such that $f(M)\not \subset D.$ The proximity function of f with respect to the singularities of D is defined by
Let $\tilde {f}:M\rightarrow \tilde {V}$ be the lift of f given by $\tau \circ \tilde {f}=f.$ Then $\tilde f$ is a holomorphic mapping on $M\setminus \tilde I,$ where $\tilde I=I\cup f^{-1}(S)$ with the indeterminacy set I of $f.$ Here we remark that Nevanlinna’s functions of $\tilde f$ can be defined similarly as in Section 3.1 by the lift of f via $\tau .$ For example, given a smooth (1,1)-form $\omega $ on $V,$ we have already noted that $g_{r}(o, x)e_{f^{*}\omega }$ is integrable on $B_{o}(r).$ Since $\tau $ is biholomorphic restricted to $V\setminus S,\, g_{r}(o, x)e_{\tilde f^{*}{(\tau ^{*}\omega )}}$ is integrable on $B_{o}(r)\setminus {f^{-1}(S)}.$ And because $f^{-1}(S)$ has measure 0 with respect to $\alpha ^{m-1},$ we see that $g_{r}(o, x)e_{\tilde f^{*}{(\tau ^{*}\omega )}}$ is integrable on $B_{o}(r)$ and $\tilde I$ does not affect the definition of $T_{\tilde f}(r, \tau ^{*}\omega ).$ It is easy to verify that
Now we prove Theorem 1.5.
Proof. We first suppose that D is the union of smooth hypersurfaces, namely, no irreducible component of $\tilde {D}$ crosses itself. Let E be the union of generic hyperplane sections of V so that the set $A=\tilde {D}\cup E$ has only normal crossing singularities. By (30) with $K_{\tilde {V}}=\tau ^{*}K_{V}\otimes L_{R_{\tau }},$ we have
Applying Theorem 1.3 to $\tilde {f}$ for divisor $A,$
The first main theorem implies that
which leads to
Note that $T_{\tilde {f}}(r,\tau ^{*}\omega )=T_{f}(r,\omega )$ and $\overline {N}_{\tilde {f}}(r,\tilde {D})=\overline {N}_{f}(r,D).$ By this together with the above, we obtain
It yields from (33) that
Since $N_{\tilde {f}}(r,\tilde {S})=0,$ it follows from (31) and (32) that
Combining (34)–(36), we show the theorem.
To prove the general case, according to the above proved, one only needs to verify this claim for an arbitrary hypersurface D of normal crossing type. Note by the arguments in [[Reference Shiffman25], p. 175] that there is a proper modification $\tau :\tilde {V}\rightarrow V$ such that $\tilde {D}=\tau ^{-1}(D)$ is only the union of a collection of smooth hypersurfaces of normal crossings. Thus, $m_{f}(r,{\text {Sing}}(D))=0.$ By the special case of this theorem proved, the claim holds for D by using Theorem 1.3.
Corollary 6.1 Shiffman, [Reference Shiffman25]
Let $f:\mathbb C^{m}\rightarrow V$ be a differentiably nondegenerate meromorphic mapping with $\dim _{\mathbb C}V\leq m$ . Let $D\subset V$ be an ample hypersurface. Then
Corollary 6.2 Defect relation
Assume the same conditions as in Theorem $1.5.$ If f satisfies the growth condition
where $\kappa $ is defined by $(1),$ then
For further consideration of defect relations, we introduce some additional notations. Let A be a hypersurface of V such that $A\supset S,$ where S is a set of nonnormal crossing singularities of D given before. We write
Set
where $\varsigma _{j}$ are given by (31). Clearly, $0\leq \gamma _{A,D}<1.$ Note from (37) that
By (32), we see that
Theorem 6.3. Let $f:M\rightarrow V$ be a differentiably nondegenerate meromorphic mapping with $\dim _{\mathbb C}M\geq \dim _{\mathbb C} V$ . Let $D_{1},\cdots ,D_{q} \in |L|$ be hypersurfaces such that any two among them have no common components, where L is a holomorphic line bundle over V. Let $A\subset V$ be a hypersurface containing the nonnormal crossing singularities of $\sum _{j=1}^{q} D_{j}.$ If f satisfies the growth condition
where $\kappa $ is defined by $(1),$ then
Proof. By (39), we get
Note that $L_{D_{1}+\cdots +D_{q}}=L^{\otimes q}.$ By Theorem 6.2, we show the theorem.
Corollary 6.4 Shiffman, [Reference Shiffman25]
Let $f:\mathbb C^{m}\rightarrow V$ be a differentiably nondegenerate meromorphic mapping with $\dim _{\mathbb C}V\leq m$ . Let $D_{1},\cdots ,D_{q}\in |L|$ be hypersurfaces such that any two among them have no common components, where L is a positive line bundle over V. Let $A\subset V$ be a hypersurface containing the nonnormal crossing singularities of $\sum _{j=1}^{q} D_{j}.$ Then
Proof. Replace $\omega $ by $c_{1}(L,h)$ in Theorem 6.3.
Corollary 6.5. Let $D\in |L|$ be a hypersurface, where L is a positive line bundle over V. If there is a hypersurface $A\subset V$ containing the nonnormal crossing singularities of D such that
then every meromorphic mapping $f:M\rightarrow V\setminus D$ with $\dim _{\mathbb C}M\geq \dim _{\mathbb C} V$ satisfying
is differentiably degenerate, where $\kappa $ is defined by $(1).$
Corollary 6.6. Let $D\subset \mathbb P^{n}(\mathbb C)$ be a hypersurface of degree $d_{D}.$ If there is a hypersurface $A\subset \mathbb P^{n}(\mathbb C)$ of degree $d_{A}$ containing the nonnormal crossing singularities of D such that $d_{A}\gamma _{A,D}+n+1<d_{D}$ , then every meromorphic mapping $f:M\rightarrow \mathbb P^{n}(\mathbb C)\setminus D$ with ${\dim _{\mathbb C}M\geq n}$ satisfying
is differentiably degenerate, where $\kappa $ is defined by $(1).$
Proof. The conditions imply that
By Corollary 6.5, we see that the corollary holds.
Competing Interests
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