Reducible deformations and smoothing of primitive multiple curves (Q889639)

A primitive multiple curve is an algebraic variety \(Y\) over \(\mathbb{C}\) which is Cohen-Macaulay, such that the induced reduced variety \(C\) is a smooth projective irreducible curve, and every closed point of \(Y\) has a neighborhood that can be embedded in a smooth surface. The paper studies deformations of \(Y\) to curves with smooth irreducible components, when the number of components is maximal. The main result states that if \(L=I/I^2\), \(I\) being the sheaf ideal of \(C\) in \(Y\) , is the ideal sheaf of a divisor with no multiple points, then \(Y\) can be deformed to reduced curves with smooth components intersecting transversally.