When ramification points meet (Q1084458)

In Invent. Math. 85, 337-371 (1986; Zbl 0598.14003), the authors introduced a general theory of limit linear series on a reducible curve C with \(Pic^ 0(C)\) compact and announced several interesting applications. In the paper under review they analyse what happens to the ramification points of a family of linear series on a family of smooth curves degenerating to a curve C with \(Pic^ 0(C)\) compact. They give new restrictions to the limit ramification points and show that, under suitable assumptions, these restrictions are the only ones. This smoothing result is applied in the author's immediately following paper [ibid. 495-515 (1987; see the review 14014)] to obtain an existence theorem for subvarieties of \(M_ g\) of expected codimension and formed by curves with suitable Weierstrass points.