Nonemptiness and smoothness of twisted Brill-Noether loci (Q2658538)

Let \(C\) be a smooth projective curve. The authors study properties of a generalization of the Brill-Noether locus: \[ B^k_{n,e}(V):=\{ E\in U^s(n,e) : h^0(c, V\otimes E)\ge k\} \ \ , \] where \(U^s(n,e)\) is the space of stable bundles of rank \(n\), degree \(e\), \(V\) is a fixed vector bundle of rank \(r\) and degree \(d\). For this notion, the authors quote the paper [\textit{M. Teixidor-I-Bigas} and \textit{L. W. Tu}, Contemp. Math. 136, 327--342 (1992; Zbl 0783.14020)]. During the last decades, there was an intense study of questions related to the classical Brill-Noether locus, as well as about generalizations. In Section 3, ``Preliminaries on twisted Brill-Noether loci'', the paper gives a very well written introduction and states main known results which are used in the following. Main results: The authors show that, for \(e\) big enough (this is precisely described), \( B^k_{n,e}(V)\) is not empty. Then they show that, in conditions similar to those in studies of Teixidor i Bigas and of Mercat (cf. the quotations in the paper), \( B^k_{n,e}(V)\) has a generically smooth connected component, of expected dimension. The paper contains other geometrical results and an example of a ``nonempty twisted Brill-Noether locus with negative expected dimension'', which ``contains a component of dimension at least 1''. ``This example shows that even for general \(C\) and general stable \(V\), the twisted Brill-Noether loci can exhibit pathologies.''