Stability of normal bundles of space curves (Q2164769)

The aim of this paper is to prove that the normal bundle of a general Brill-Noether space curve of degree \(d\) and genus \(g\) is stable if and only if \(g\geq2\) and \((d,g)\notin\{(5,2),(6,4)\}\). When \(g\leq1\) and the characteristic of the ground field is zero, it is classical that the normal bundle is strictly (semi) stable. The authors show that this still holds in positive characteristic except when the characteristic is \(2\), the genus is \(0\) and the degree is even. To be precise let \(C\subseteq\mathbb{P}^3\) be a general Brill-Noether space curve of degree \(d\) and genus \(g\) over an algebraically closed field \(k\). Let \(N_C\) be normal bundle of \(C\). The aim of this paper is to prove the main theorem: 1) \(N_C\) is stable if and only if \(g\geq2\) and \((d,g)\notin\{(5,2),(6,4)\}\). 2) \(N_C\) is strictly (semi) stable if and only if \(g<2\) and one of the following holds: \(\mathrm{char}(k)\neq2\), \(g=1\), or \(d\) is odd. 3) \(N_C\) is unstable if and only if \((d,g)\in\{(5,2),(6,4)\}\) or all of the following hold: \(\mathrm{char}(k)=2\), \(g=0\), and \(d\) is even. The authors prove this result by using three basic specializations: For 1) they specialize to a curve of degree \((d-1, g)\) union a \(1\)-secant line. For 2) they specialize to a curve of degree \((d-1, g-1)\) union a \(2\)-secant line. For 3) they specialize to a curve of degree \((d-2, g-3)\) union a \(4\)-secant conic. These degenerations reduce the main theorem to a finite set of base cases. The most challenging part of the paper is to verify these base cases. This paper is organized as follows: Section 1 is an introduction to the subject. Section 2 deals with some preliminaries. The authors collect basic facts on normal bundles of curves, stability of vector bundles, elementary modifications, and on certain reducible Brill-Noether curves. Section 3 is devoted to the unstable cases. The authors elaborate on the two cases \((d, g)\in\{(5, 2), (6, 4)\}\) as well as the obstruction to stability for rational curves in characteristic \(2\). Section 4 deals with stability and degeneration. In this Section the authors introduce several basic degenerations to reduce the main result to a small set of initial cases. By specializing to the union of a general Brill-Noether curve and a \(4\)-secant conic, they reduce the main result to the cases \(g\leq 8\). For the rest of the paper, the authors analyze these initial cases as follows. Section 5 concerns stability and degeneration (gluing data). Section 6 deals with reduction to a finite list of \((d, g)\). In this section the authors combine the results of the previous section to reduce the proof of the main result to a finite list of base cases. In Section 7, Section 8 and Section 9 the authors analyze base cases (applications of gluing data), stability and degeneration (limits of gluing data) and base cases (applications of limits of gluing data). Section 10 and Section 11 are devoted to curves of degree \(6\), genus \(2\) and curves of degree \(7\), genus \(5\) respectively.