Complete intersections on general hypersurfaces (Q841523)

The authors deal with the following natural question. Which complete intersections of small codimension are contained in a general hypersurface of degree \(d\) in \(\mathbb{P}^n\)? Let \(a_1,\dots, a_r\) be natural numbers less than a number \(d\). One wishes to know whether a complete intersection of type \((a_1,\dots,a_r)\) is contained in a general hypersurface of degree \(d\) in the projective space. The authors show using Terracini's lemma that this is true if and only if for general forms \(F_i\) of degrees \(a_i\) and \(G_i\) of degree \(d-a_i\), the ideal generated by the \(F\)'s and \(G\)'s contain all forms of degree \(d\). In particular, \(2r\geq n+1\). They restrict their attention thus to the two cases \(2r=n+1\) and \(2r=n+2\) and classify all possibilities when this will occur.