On a conjecture of Xiao.
Given a covering family of effective 1-cycles on a complex projective variety , we find conditions allowing one to construct a geometric quotient , with regular on the whole of , such that every fiber of is an equivalence class for the equivalence relation naturally defined by . Among other results, we show that on a normal and -factorial projective variety with canonical singularities and , every covering and quasi-unsplit family of rational curves generates a geometric extremal...