Linear syzygies of curves with prescribed gonality (Q2326669)

The study of free resolutions of canonical curves can help understand the geometry of curves, e.g. as described in Green's original conjecture. One can study refined questions of this type for a \(k\)-gonal curve, where the gonality is defined to be the minimal degree of a nonconstant map from the curve to \(\mathbb P^1\). In this paper the authors focus on the minimal resolution of a \(k\)-gonal curve \(C\) of genus \(g\). They first show that for a general curve \(C\) with gonality \(k\leq \frac{g+1}{2}\), the Betti diagram of the canonical embedding of \(C\) satisfies that \(b_{g-k, 1} = g-k\), which proves Schreyer's conjecture and predicts that all highest order linear syzygies in the canonical embedding of \(C\) are determined by the syzygies of the \((k-1)\)-dimensional scroll containing \(C\). Moreover, the authors prove an effective version of the gonality conjecture for general \(k\)-gonal curves, improving related results by Ein-Lazarsfeld and Rathmann. In order to prove these results, one of the key ingredients is to use certain compactified Hurwitz space of maps to \(\mathbb P^1\) and an Eagon-Northcott divisor parameterizing \(k\)-gonal curves with unexpected linear syzygy behavior.