Counterexamples to Mercat's conjecture (Q284106)

The classical Clifford index \(\mathrm {Cliff}(C)\) of a smooth projective curve \(C\) of genus \(g\), placing a bound on the number of sections of a line bundle of given degree, has played an important rôle in understanding the geometric properties of \(C\) and of the moduli spaces of curves. Some years ago, Mercat proposed a conjecture extending this bound to semistable bundles of rank \(\geq2\). More recently, Lange and Newstead proposed a definition of higher rank Clifford indices. For this, for any vector bundle \(E\) of rank \(n\) and degree \(d\), define \(\mathrm {Cliff}(E):=\frac1n(d-2(h^0(E)-n))\). Then \(\mathrm {Cliff}_n(C):=\min\{\mathrm {Cliff}(E)\}\), the minimum being taken over all semistable \(E\) for which \(d\leq n(g-1)\) and \(h^0(E)\geq2n\). The most important part of Mercat's conjecture can be stated as \(\mathrm {Cliff}_n(C)=\mathrm {Cliff}(C)\); for \(n=2\), this statement is actually equivalent to Mercat's conjecture. There are now many examples known of counterexamples to Mercat's conjecture in ranks \(2\) and \(3\), although recently the conjecture has been proved for general curves in rank \(2\). The present paper provides counterexamples in all ranks \(n\geq4\) in high genus (\(g=\mathrm{O}(n^{10})\)). The method of proof is similar to those of some previous papers, making use of Lazarsfeld-Mukai bundles on \(K3\) surfaces.