Constructing reducible Brill-Noether curves

DOI10.25537/DM.2022V27.1953-1983MaRDI QIDQ2099423zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Eric Larson

Publication date 23 November 2022

Published in Documenta Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.02301

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zbMATH Keywords

Brill-Noether theory degeneration specialization

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Families, moduli of curves (algebraic) (14H10) Special divisors on curves (gonality, Brill-Noether theory) (14H51)

Abstract: It was recently determined exactly through how many general points a nondegenerate curve with nonspecial hyperplane section can pass. This gives rise to a method of constructing reducible curves

C_{1} c u p_{G} a m m a C_{2} o m a t h b b P^{r}

with general nodes: We take a finite set

G a m m a s u b s e t m a t h b b P^{r}

of general points, and find nondegenerate nonspecial curves

C_{1}

and

C_{2}

in

m a t h b b P^{r}

of specified degrees and genera which pass through

G a m m a

, and glue together along

G a m m a

. The goal of this paper is to show that, subject to certain mild assumptions, stable maps constructed in this manner lie in the closure of the locus of nondegenerate stable maps from curves of general moduli, i.e. are BN-curves. As explained in arXiv:1809.05980, these results play a key role in the author's proof of the Maximal Rank Conjecture.

Review text

Moduli spaces of curves in \(\mathbb P^r\) have been deeply studied over recent decades. A basic problem is determining which reducible curves are limits of smooth curves of general moduli, since degeneration is a powerful proof technique. Thus the author asks if \(f: C_1 \cup_{\Gamma} C_2 \to \mathbb P^r\) is a map from a reducible curve, under what conditions can \(f\) be deformed to an immersion of a general smooth curve? To describe his results, a map \(C \to \mathbb P^r\) is a Weak Brill-Noether curve if it corresponds to a point in the Kontsevich space \(\overline M_g (\mathbb P^r,d)\) of stable maps of degree \(d\) which dominates \(\overline M_g\) and whose general member is a map from a smooth curve which is either nondegenerate (BN curve) or nonspecial (NS curve) or both (NNS curve), and which is an immersion if \(r \geq 3\), birational if \(r=2\), finite if \(r=1\). The Brill-Noether theorem says that BN-curves of degree \(d\) and genus \(g\) in \(\mathbb P^r\) exist if and only if the Brill-Noether number \(\rho (d,g,r) := (r+1)d -rg -r(r+1)\) is nonnegative, when the locus of BN-curves form an irreducible component. The author works towards the conjecture that if \(f: C_1 \cup_{\Gamma} C_2 \to \mathbb P^r\) is stable and \(f|_{C_1}, f|_{C_2}\) are BN-curves and \(f(\Gamma)\) is a general set of \(n\) points, then \(f\) is a BN-curve if and only if it has non-negative Brill-Noether number. Implicit here are inequalities \[ (r+1)d_i - (r-3)(g_i - 1) - (r-1)n \geq 0 \] where \(f_i\) has degree \(d_i\) and genus \(g_i\). While the author does not prove the full conjecture (it is false when the inequalities above are equalities), he does develop a flexible technique to study cases of the conjecture when the inequalities above are close to equality and achieves good results, especially when \(f_i\) are NSS-curves. In particular, his results significantly extend cases established by \textit{E. Sernesi} [Invent. Math. 75, 25--57 (1984; Zbl 0541.14024)] and \textit{E. Ballico} and \textit{A. Bernardi} [Lith. Math. J. 52, 134--137 (2012; Zbl 1261.14026)]. They also play a key role in the author's proof of the maximal rank conjecture [\textit{E. Larson}, ``The maximal rank conjecture, Preprint, \url{arXiv:1711.04906}].

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