On a special class of smooth codimension two subvarieties in \(\mathbb P^n, n\geqslant 5\) (Q555960)

A well known (and neither fully proved nor disproved yet) conjecture by Robin Hartshorne, which dates back to 1974, claims that every codimension two subvariety of \(\mathbb{P}^n\), \(n\geq 7\), is a complete intersection. This paper proves some results related to Hartshorne's conjecture, in connection with the following theorem by Lefschetz: if a smooth noncomplete intersection codimension 2 subvariety \(X\subset\mathbb{P}^n\), \(n\geq 4\), lies on a hypersurface \(S\), then \(\dim(X\cap\text{Sing}(S))\geq n- 4\). Theorem A. If \(X\) is a smooth subcanonical threefold of degree \(d\leq 25\) in \(\mathbb{P}^5\), then \(X\) is a complete intersection. Theorem B. Let \(X\subset\mathbb{P}^n\), \(n\geq 5\), be a smooth codimension two subvariety (with \(\text{Pic}(X)= \mathbb{Z}\) if \(n= 5\)) lying on a hypersurface \(\Sigma\) of degree \(m\), which is singular, with multiplicity \(m- 2\), along a linear subspace \(K\) of dimension \(n- 2\). Then \(X\) is a complete intersection.