Remarks on families of singular curves with hyperelliptic normalizations (Q1005525)

Let \(S\) be a smooth surface of non-negative Kodaira dimension. The paper investigates the existence and the possible dimensions of flat families of irreducible curves on \(S\) all having constant geometric genus and hyperelliptic normalization. It is worth noticing that such families give rise to families of the same dimensions of rational curves on the Hilbert scheme \(\text{Hilb}^2(S)\), being thus of interest also from the point of view of Mori theory. In the first part of the paper, upper bounds on the dimension of such families are proved, under some assumption on the surface \(S\). In particular, if the canonical map is birational the dimension is \(0\), while it is smaller or equal to \(1\) if \(S\) admits a fibration over a non-hyperelliptic curve of genus \(\geq 3\); moreover, the dimension is bounded by \(2\) if the surface has maximal Albanese dimension. The author also provides a large number of examples of such families, both with small and big dimensions. Then the author proves some Reider-like results on such families with big (\(\geq 3\) with \(p_g(S)\geq 0\), or \(\geq 5\)) dimension, extending some of the results contained in the joint paper of the author together with \textit{F. Flamini} and \textit{G. Pacienza} [``On families of rational curves in the Hilbert square of a surface'' (with an appendix by E. Sernesi), to appear in the Mich. Math. J.; cf. also \url{arXiv:0704.1367}]. In these cases of large dimension, the algebraic class of a fibre of the family is shown to have an effective decomposition into algebraic moving classes, satisfying some special intersection conditions. These last results -unlike the ones in the smooth case- are obtained by means of deformation techniques and bending and breaking of rational curves in \(\text{Hilb}^2(S)\).