The osculating cone to special Brill-Noether loci (Q495987)

In this article the authors study the local structure of the Brill-Noether locus \(W_d^0(C)\) at a point \(L\) of \(W_d^1(C)\). More precisely, they consider the osculating cone of order \(3\) \(OC_3(W_d^0(C),L)\). Previous results were obtained by \textit{G. R. Kempf} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 97, 219--225 (1986; Zbl 0595.14021)], who proved that, for a canonical curve of genus \(4\), the osculating cone \(OC_3(W_3^0(C),L)\) coincides with \(C\), and by \textit{G. R. Kempf} and \textit{F.-O. Schreyer} [Compos. Math. 67, No. 3, 343--353 (1988; Zbl 0665.14018)], who proved a local Torelli theorem for the osculating cone to \(W_{g-1}^0(C)\) in the case \(g\geq 5\). Schreyer then conjectured that it is possible to reconstruct \(C\) from the geometry of the osculating cone to other Brill-Noether loci, with \(d\neq g-1\). Here the authors provide an affirmative answer in a special case, proving that a general canonical curve \(C\) of genus \(2(d-1)\geq 4\) is an irreducible component of \(\mathbb P(OC_3(W_d^0(C),L)\), for any \(L\in W_d^1(C)\). This result is a corollary of the main theorem of the article, that gives a characterization of the intersection of the osculating cone with \(\bar D=\mathbb P^{d-2}\), the fibre over a divisor \(D\in \mid L\mid\), in the projectivised tangent cone \(\mathbb P\mathcal T_L(W_d^0(C))\). In the present situation this last cone results to be equal to \(\mathbb P^1\times \mathbb P^{d-2}\), as a consequence of the fact that the multiplication map \(\mu_L\) is an isomorphism. Moreover \(W_d^1(C)\) is a union of finitely many reduced isolated points.