Local Positivity of Ample Line Bundles
  Let $L$ be a nef line bundle on a smooth complex projective variety $X$ of dimension $n$. Demailly has introduced a very interesting invariant --- the Seshadri constant $\epsilon(L,x)$ --- which in effect measures how positive $L$ is locally near a given point $x \in X$. For instance, Seshadri's criterion for ampleness may be phrased as stating that $L$ is ample if and only if there exists a positive number $e > 0$ such that $\epsilon(L,x) > e$ for all $x \in X$, and if $L$ is VERY ample, then $\epsilon(L,x) \ge 1$ for every $x$. We prove the somewhat surprising result that in each dimension $n$ there is a uniform lower bound on the Seshadri constant of an ample line bundle $L$ at a very general point of $X$. Specifically, $\epsilon(L,x) \ge (1/n) $ for all $x \in X$ outside the union of countably many proper subvarieties of $X$. Examples of Miranda show that there cannot exist a bound (independent of $X$ and $L$) that holds at every point. The proof draws inspiration from two sources: first, the arguments used to prove boundedness of Fano manifolds of Picard number one; and secondly some of the geometric ideas involving zero-estimates appearing in the work of Faltings and others on Diophantine approximation and transcendence theory. We give some elementary applications of the main theorem to adjoint and pluricanonical linear series. 
Lawrence Ein, Oliver K\"uchle and Robert Lazarsfeld