Determinantal characterization of canonical curves and combinatorial theta identities (Q1934292)

Let \(C\) be a non-hyperelliptic compact Riemann surface of genus \(g\geq 4\) canonically embedded into projective space. Petri's theorem determines its ideal in terms of relations among the holomorphic quadratic differentials. In this paper it is shown that the linearly independent relations of Petri admit an intrinsic characterization, which is based on combinatoriccal properties of some types of determinants. The authors introduce a mechanism depending on the choice of a basis of holomorphic differentials which reduces the combinatorial identieties to a simple rank condition for matrices whose entries are logarithmic derivatives of theta functions. This gives a characterization of canonical curves in terms of theta identities. This also leads to a solution of the question of expressing the determinant of a Brill-Noether matrix in terms of theta functions.