On inflection points, monomial curves, and hypersurfaces containing projective curves (Q2563772)

Let \(X\subset \mathbb{P}^n\) be a nondegenerate projective curve. The aim of the paper under review is to present a new method of proof and a generalization of some results by Castelnuovo, Fano, Eisenbud and Harris that provide an upper bound for the number of linearly independent hypersurfaces \(Z\supset X\) of given degree \(m\) and a description of the borderline cases. -- To be more specific, it is proved that this number is at most \({m+n \choose n} - mn-1\) with the equality attained iff \(X\) is a rational normal curve (this result is due to Castelnuovo and Harris); moreover, if \(X\) is smooth and the number of linearly independent hypersurfaces \(Z\supset X\) of degree \(m\) is less than \({m+n \choose n} - mn-1\), then this number is at most \({m+n \choose n} - m(n+1)\) with equality attained iff the genus of \(X\) equals 1 (for \(m=2\) this is due to Fano, Eisenbud and Harris). The method of proof is based on the study of inflection points of the curve \(X\). It involves two ideas. The first one is that the presence of an inflection point imposes an upper bound on the number of hypersurfaces of degree \(m\) containing \(X\) (for the case of canonical linear system, this idea was used by R. O. Buchweitz). The second idea is that if this bound is attained, then under some additional assumptions, \(X\) can be deformed to a certain monomial curve. -- As a by-product, some results on semigroups in \(\mathbb{N}\) are obtained.