Smoothable locally non Cohen-Macaulay multiple structures on curves (Q486356)

The main purpose of the paper is to show that a wide range of multiple structures on curves arises when a family of embeddings degenerates to a morphism \(\varphi\) of finite degree. In addition, the authors prove that both Cohen-Macaulay and non Cohen-Macaulay multiple structures can happen and notice that many multiple structures can be smoothed. In particular, they give numerical conditions in terms of the degree and the arithmetical genus for the existence of many locally Cohen-Macaulay and non Cohen-Macaulay smoothable double structures. Furthermore, in the paper, it is showed that, in order to determine uniquely double structures, it is not enough to look at a first order deformation of \(\varphi\) but one needs to choose a formal deformation. The paper also contains an appendix where the authors fix a gap in a 1997's paper by the first and last author [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 349, No. 6, 2477--2492 (1997; Zbl 0872.14032)].