Theta divisors of stable vector bundles may be nonreduced (Q2516429)

If a vector bundle on a smooth projective curve is strictly semistable, its theta divisor decomposes into the theta divisors of the stable summands of the associated graded bundles. The converse is not true, as was shown by Raynaud, who gave a counterexample for a bi-elliptic curve of genus 3. It was never published, in the appendix of this paper a proof is given and generalized to bi-elliptic curves of genus \(\geq 3\). \textit{A. Beauville} [Manuscr. Math. 110, No. 3, 343--349 (2003; Zbl 1016.14016)] gave examples of stable bundles with reducible theta divisors over a general curve of genus \(\geq 3\). In the present paper it is shown that over any curve of genus \(\geq 5\) there exist stable bundes of all ranks \(\geq 4\) (respectively \(\geq 5\)) with reducible (respectively reducible and non-reduced) theta divisor. In the last section the construction is adapted to give examples of symplectic bundles of even rank \(\geq 6\) (respectively \(\geq 8\)) with reducible (respectively reducible and non-reduced) theta divisor.