Nouvelles courbes de bon genre dans l'espace projectif. (New curves of good genus in projective space) (Q1123940)

The purpose of this paper is to construct curves C in \({\mathbb{P}}^ 3\) having the genus large with respect to the degree d of C and with respect to the smallest degree k of a surface containing C. This partially answers to a problem already considered by Halphen: to find, for any \(d,k>0\), the maximum genus of a non singular connected curve in \({\mathbb{P}}^ 3.\) In a letter to the authors (1978) Joe Harris has communicated how to prove the existence of curves having the same genus found in the present paper, but his reasoning uses hypotheses of general position. The analysis of such hypotheses in the context of the reflexive sheaves instead of curves as in the paper of \textit{A. Hirschowitz} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 66, 105-137 (1988; Zbl 0647.14004)], has originated the work under review. The method used here is to construct certain good reflexive sheaves of rank 2 on \({\mathbb{P}}^ 3\) and afterwards to deduce the existence of good non singular curves associated to the sheaf as locus of zeroes of global sections.