Ulrich bundles on del Pezzo threefolds (Q6052910)

A vector bundle \({\mathcal E}\) over a smooth complex projective variety is said to be Ulrich if \(h^i(X, {\mathcal E}(-p))=0\) for \(0\leq i\) and \(1 \leq p \leq \dim X\). There are may intriguing questions on Ulrich bundles, mainly those of existence and, when stable, of the study of the characteristics of their moduli (see the Introduction of the paper under review and references therein). This paper deals with these questions when \(X \subset {\mathbb P}^N\) is a Del Pezzo threefold (Fano of even index). To be concrete (see Thm. 1.1 and 1.2) when the index is 2 and the anticanonical bundle is twice the hyperplane divisor, the moduli of stable Ulrich bundles of rank \(r\) and determinant \({\mathcal O}_X(r)\) on \(X\) is smooth of dimension \(r^2+1\); when \(X \subset {\mathbb P}^9\) is the \(2\)-Veronese embedding of \({\mathbb P}^3\), it does not carry Ulrich bundles of odd rank, and for any even \(r\) the moduli of stable Ulrich bundles of rank \(r\) and determinant \({\mathcal O}_X(r)\) on \(X\) behave as in the index two case: it is smooth of dimension \(r^2+1\). An important ingredient in the proof is the following: since Ulrich bundles are globally generated, a general \(r-1\)-dimensional subspace of global sections is defining, as a locus of degeneration, a very particular curve in the \(3\)-fold (see Thm. 3.1) and viceversa, a curve with those special properties and a subspace of the space of extensions of its ideal sheaf (twisted by a divisor which turns to be the determinant of \({\mathcal E}\)) allows to produce an Ulrich bundle. This correspondence between Ulrich bundles and degeneration curves is, as said, used in the proof of the main results and can be furtherly studied, see Section 5 for some proposals by the authors.