A Clifford inequality for semistable curves (Q2103318)

Let \(X\) be a semistable curve of genus \(g\ge 2\) and \(L\) a special line bundle on \(X\). Set \(d:=\deg L)\). If \(X\) is integral, Clifford's inequality for integral curves would give \(h^0(L)\le 1+d/2\). For a reducible curve it is essential to impose some restrictionn on the multidegree of \(L\). The author considers line bundles of uniform degree, i.e. line bundles \(L\) such that \(0\le \deg (L_{|T})\le \deg(\omega _{X|T})\) for every irreducible component \(T\) of \(X\). Let \(\mathbb {G}_X\) be the dual graph of \(X\) and \(\mathbb{G}^{\mathrm{Br}}_X\) the graph ontained from \(\mathbb {G}_X\) contracting all bridges. Let \(\tau\) denotes the number of leaves of \(\mathbb{G}^{\mathrm{Br}}_X\). The author proves that a uniform line bundle satisfies \(h^0(L) \le d/2 +\tau/2\) and on every \(X\) there is a uniform line bundle for which equality holds. The authors also shows that semistable multidegrees have weaker properties for \(h^0\). The author proves that if \(d=g-1\) every stable multidegree is uniform (and hence it has the classical Clifford if \(X\) has no separating node).