On the singularities of effective loci of line bundles (Q2259191)

For a smooth projective curve \(X\), the Brill-Noether locus \(W^0_d(X)\) is supported in the points \(L\) of the Picard scheme of \(X\) such the linear system \(|L|\) is non empty and of degree \(d\) and it is known to have only rational singularities. The paper under review extends this result from dimension one to higher dimension. Since smooth points \([D]\) in the divisor scheme Div\((X)\) of the expected dimension are characterized as \(D\) to be \textit{semi-regular} (see Def. 2.1), this is the natural locus where previous result extends. In fact the main result of this paper (see Theorem 1.1) states that for any smooth projective variety \(X\), any irreducible component of the semi-regular Brill-Noether locus \(W_{\mathrm{sr}}^0(X)\) has only rational singularities. An enlightening description of this locus for a ruled surface is provided in Section 3.