Universal secant bundles and syzygies of canonical curves (Q2661167)

The works of M. Green on curves embedded in projective spaces show that the existence of special linear series on a curve determines special syzygies in the resolution of its homogeneous ideal, known as syzygies of low rank, or geometric syzygies. F. O. Schreyer conjectured that geometric syzygies generate the space of all syzygies, for general canonical curves. The author proves the conjecture for curves of even genus. The main tool in the proof is a careful description of some vector bundles on \(K3\) surfaces \(X\) arising from linear series on curves \(C\) of genus \(2k\) contained in \(X\). The construction, introduced by R. Lazarsfeld and S. Mukai, starts with the kernel \(E\) of the map \(H^0(C,A)\otimes \mathcal O_X\to i_*A\), where \(A\) is the line bundle on \(C\) defined by a linear series \(g^1_{k+1}\), and \(i:C\to X\) is the embedding. The author determines several cohomological properties of sheaves associated to zero-loci of sections of \(E^\vee\). These properties allow the author to give a description of the last syzygy module of the curve \(C\). The results yield an alternative proof for C. Voisin's description of the resolution of general canonical curves of even genus (see [\textit{C. Voisin}, J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 4, No. 4, 363--404 (2002; Zbl 1080.14525)]), and the aforementioned proof of the even genus case of the Schreyer's conjecture.