Rank 2 Ulrich bundles on general double plane covers (Q1979296)

The existence of Ulrich bundles on projective varieties is relevant in the description of their geometric structure. Ulrich bundles are defined as vector bundles which are arithmetically Cohen-Macaulay, with maximal number of global sections in their first twist. It is conjectured that every smooth projective variety supports some Ulrich bundle \(E\), and indeed some large classes of projective varieties are known to satisfy the conjecture. On the other hand, it is hard in general to determine the minimal rank of Ulrich bundles, even for some specific natural classes of varieties \(X\). The athors consider the case where \(X\) is a double cover of \(\mathbb P^2\) branched along a curve \(B\) of even degree \(\geq 6\). A result of \textit{A. J. Parameswaran} and \textit{P. Narayanan} [J. Algebra 583, 187--208 (2021; Zbl 1473.14087)] proves that when \(B\) is general, then \(X\) has no Ulrich line bundles. The authors prove that for general \(B\) the double cover \(X\) supports Ulrich bundles of rank \(2\). The result is obtained by constructing on \(X\) special configurations of points, and then using the correspondence between finite sets with the Cayley-Bacharach property and rank \(2\) vector bundles on surfaces.