Stability of Frobenius pull-backs of tangent bundles and generic injectivity of Gauss maps in positive characteristic

Abstract

For a smooth projective variety $X$ of dimension $n$ in a projective space ${\bb P}^N$ defined over an algebraically closed field $k$, the Gauss map is a morphism from $X$ to the Grassmannian of $n$-plans in ${\bb P}^N$sending $x \in X$ to the embedded tangent space $T_xX \subset {\bb P}^N$. The purpose of this paper is to prove the generic injectivity of Gauss maps in positive characteristic for two cases; (1) weighted complete intersections of dimension $n \geqslant 3$ of general type; (2) surfaces or 3-folds with $\mu$-semistable tangent bundles; based on a criterion of Kaji by looking at the stability of Frobenius pull-backs of their tangent bundles. The first result implies that a conjecture of Kleiman-Piene is true in case $X$ is of general type of dimension $n \geqslant 3$. The second result is a generalization of the injectivity for curves.