A uniform lower bound for the Zhang-Kawazumi invariant and applications to the Bogomolov conjecture

We prove that the Zhang-Kawazumi invariant $φ(X)$ of a compact and connected Riemann surface $X$ of genus $g\ge 2$ is strictly larger than \[\frac{g(g+2)-(2g+1)H_g}{g-1},\] where $H_g=\sum_{k=1}^g \frac{1}{k}$ denotes the $g$-th harmonic number. If $X$ is hyperelliptic, we give the stronger bound $φ