A Castelnuovo bound for smooth surfaces (Q1087939)

Let X be a smooth variety of dimension n and degree \(d\) in \({\mathbb{P}}^ r\), not contained in any hyperplane. X is said k-normal if hypersurfaces of degree \(k\) cut out a complete linear system on X. As is known, every X is k-normal for k large enough. The problem of finding an explicit bound \(k_ 0=k_ 0(n,d,r)\) such that X is k-normal for every \(k\geq k_ 0\) has a long history. In 1893, Castelnuovo showed that \(k_ 0(1,d,r)=d-2\); recently, \textit{L. Gruson, R. Lazarsfeld} and \textit{C. Peskine} [Invent. Math. 72, 491-506 (1983; Zbl 0565.14014)] showed that \(k_ 0(1,d,r)=d+1- r\), so that, now, the expected bound is \(k_ 0(n,d,r)=d+n-r\). The author proves the following facts: assume that the base field is \({\mathbb{C}}\); if \(n=2\) and \(X\subset {\mathbb{P}}^ 5\) (resp. \({\mathbb{P}}^ 4)\), then X is k- normal for any \(k\geq d-2\) (resp. d-1); if in addition \(X\subset {\mathbb{P}}^ 4\) and \(h^{1,0}(X)=0\), then X is also (d-2)-normal. The method of proof is inspired by Castelnuovo's. More recently, Lazarsfeld has improved the above result by proving the expected bound for surfaces.