Geodesic rays and stability in the cscK problem

Abstract

We prove that any finite energy geodesic ray with a finite Mabuchi slope is maximal in the sense of Berman-Boucksom-Jonsson, and reduce the proof of the uniform Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture for constant scalar curvature Kähler metrics to Boucksom-Jonsson's regularization conjecture about the convergence of non-Archimedean entropy functional. As further applications, we show that a uniform K-stability condition for model filtrations and the $\mathcal{J}^{K_X}$-stability are both sufficient conditions for the existence of cscK metrics. The first condition is also conjectured to be necessary. Our arguments also produce a different proof of the toric uniform version of YTD conjecture for all polarized toric manifolds. Another result proved here is that the Mabuchi slope of a geodesic ray associated to a test configuration is equal to the non-Archimedean Mabuchi invariant.