Certified Severi dimensions for hyperelliptic and supersymmetric cusps (Q6146236)

The authors consider the ``Severi'' variety \(M^n_{d,g}\) of degree \(d\) morphisms \(\mathbb P^1\to \mathbb P^n\) with image of arithmetic genus \(g\). They conjecture and prove in special cases formulas for the codimension of substrata \(\mathcal V_{S,\textbf k}\) where \(S\) is a given semigroup and \(\textbf k\) a ramification profile. The morphism \(f\colon \mathbb P^1\to \mathbb P^n\) can be described in suitable affine coordinates with power series \(f_i=t^{k_i}+\text{h.o.t.}\), \(i=1,\dots,n\), with \(k_i\leq k_{i+1}\). Then \(\textbf k = (k_1,\dots,k_n)\) is the ramification profile and \(\sum (k_i-1)\) the ramification index. The first result concerns rational curves with a unique singularity of hyperelliptic cuspidal type, that is of type \(A_{2g}\). If \(n \leq 2g \leq d\) and \(\textbf k=(2,4,\dots,2n)\) then the subvariety \(\mathcal V_{\textbf k} \subset M^n_{d,g}\) has codimension \((n-1)g\), and this stratum is unirational. The proof is bases on a detailed study of the conditions on the \(f_i\) to give the required singularity. For general unicuspidal curves with \(n \leq 2g \leq d\) the Authors conjecture an explicit formula for the codimension of \(\mathcal V_{S,\textbf k}\) in terms of combinatorial data of \(S\) and \(\textbf k\). This conjecture is verified for a class of cusps, which have in some sense opposite properties to the hyperelliptic cusps. For \(n=3\) and semigroup \(S=\langle ab, ac, bc\rangle\) with ramification profile \( (ab, ac, bc)\) the codimension is \(2\rho(abc) + ab + ac + bc -7\) where \(\rho(abc) \) is the number of gaps larger then \(abc\).