Higher ramification and varieties of secant divisors on the generic curve
Gavril Farkas
备注：
25 pages. Numerous changes suggested by the referee, several proofs explained in more detail. To appear in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society
For a smooth projective curve, the cycles of e-secant k-planes are among the most studied objects in classical enumerative geometry and there are well-known formulas due to Castelnuovo, Cayley and MacDonald concerning them. Despite various attempts, surprisingly little is known about the enumerative validity of such formulas. The aim of this paper is to completely clarify this problem in the case of the generic curve C of given genus. Using degeneration techniques and a few facts about the birational geometry of moduli spaces of stable pointed curves we determine precisely under which conditions the cycle of e-secant k-planes in non-empty and we compute its dimension. We also precisely determine the dimension of the variety of linear series on C carrying e-secant k-planes. In a different direction, in the last part of the paper we study the distribution of ramification points of the powers of a line bundle on C having prescribed ramification at a given point.
The aim of this paper is to provide another perspective on secant varieties on algebraic curves by reformulating the problem in terms of refined de Jonquières divisors, that is divisors on the curve with prescribed multiplicities and dimensions of their spaces of global sections. We are able to both recover some already known results and to obtain some new statements concerning the dimension theory of secant varieties. We do this via the study of the dimension theory of refined de Jonquières divisors in some relevant cases and degeneration arguments.
Inside the symmetric product of a very general curve, we consider the codimension-one subvarieties of symmetric tuples of points imposing exceptional secant conditions on linear series on the curve of fixed degree and dimension. We compute the classes of such divisors, and thus obtain improved bounds for the slope of the cone of effective divisor classes on symmetric products of a very general curve. By letting the moduli of the curve vary, we study more generally the classes of the related divisors inside the moduli space of stable pointed curves.
In this note we consider multiples aD, where D is a divisor of the blow-up of P^n along points in general position which appears in the Alexander and Hirschowitz list of Veronese embeddings having defective secant varieties. In particular we show that there is such a D with h^1(X,D) > 0 and h^1(X,2D) = 0.
This paper is a sequel to \cite{C}, in which the author studies secant planes to linear series on a curve that is general in moduli. In that paper, the author proves that a general curve has no linear series with exceptional secant planes, in a very precise sense. Consequently, it makes sense to study effective divisors on $\ov{\mc{M}}_g$ associated to curves equipped with secant-exceptional linear series. Here we describe a strategy for computing the classes of those divisors. We pay special attention to the extremal case of $(2d-1)$-dimensional series with $d$-secant $(d-2)$-planes, which ap…
For a smooth projective curve, the cycles of subordinate or, more generally, secant divisors to a given linear series are among some of the most studied objects in classical enumerative geometry. We consider the intersection of two such cycles corresponding to secant divisors of two different linear series on the same curve and investigate the validity of the enumerative formulas counting the number of divisors in the intersection. We study some interesting cases, with unexpected transversality properties, and establish a general method to verify when this intersection is empty.
Proves that if a curve has totally split reduction and the corresponding skeleton (as a metric graph) is a chain of loops with generic edge lengths, then every divisor on the graph with imposed ramification at the rightmost vertex $p$ of the skeleton lifts to a divisor class on the curve with the same ramification at some point $P$ that retracts to $p$, extending the work of Cartwright-Jensen-Payne. Gives a positive answer to lifting proper tropical intersections within a polytopal domain in an analytic torus.
We study the ramification divisors of projections of a smooth projective variety onto a linear subspace of the same dimension. We prove that the ramification divisors vary in a maximal dimensional family for a large class of varieties. Going further, we study the map that associates to a linear projection its ramification divisor. We show that this map is dominant for most (but not all!) varieties of minimal degree, using (linked) limit linear series of higher rank. We find the degree of this map in some cases, extending the classical appearance of Catalan numbers in the geometry of rational n…
We compute the classes of universal theta divisors of degrees zero and g-1 over the Deligne-Mumford compactification of the moduli space of curves, with various integer weights on the points, in particular reproving a recent result of Müller. We also obtain a formula for the class in the Chow ring of the moduli space of curves of compact type of the double ramification locus, given by the condition that a fixed linear combination of the marked points is a principal divisor, reproving a recent result of Hain. Our approach for computing the theta divisor is more direct, via test curves and the g…
Fay's trisecant formula shows that the Kummer variety of the Jacobian of a smooth projective curve has a four dimensional family of trisecant lines. We study when these lines intersect the theta divisor of the Jacobian, and prove that the Gauss map of the theta divisor is constant on these points of intersection, when defined. We investigate the relation between the Gauss map and multisecant planes of the Kummer variety as well.
We define an effective divisor of the moduli space of stable curves $\overline{M_g}$, which is denoted $\overline{S^{2}W}$. Writing the class of $\overline{S^{2}W}$ in the Picard group of the moduli functor Pic$_{\text{fun}}(\overline{M_{g}})\otimes \mathbb{Q}$ in terms of the so-called Harer basis $λ,δ_0,\ldots,δ_{[g/2]}$, we prove that the relations among the coefficients of $δ_1,\ldots,δ_{[g/2]}$ are the same relations on coefficients as the Brill-Noether divisors. We present a result on effective divisors of $\overline{M_g}$ which could be useful to get the same relations on coefficients f…
Motivated by the realizability problem for principal tropical divisors with a fixed ramification profile, we explore the tropical geometry of the double ramification locus in $\mathcal{M}_{g,n}$.There are two ways to define a tropical analogue of the double ramification locus: one as a locus of principal divisors, the other as a locus of finite effective ramified covers of a tree. We show that both loci admit a structure of a generalized cone complex in $M_{g,n}^{trop}$, with the latter contained in the former. We prove that the locus of principal divisors has cones of codimension zero in $M_{…
The works of Hassett and Kuznetsov identify countably many divisors $C_d$ in the open subset of $\mathbb{P}^{55}=\mathbb{P}(H^0(\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{P}^5}(3)))$ parametrizing all cubic 4-folds and conjecture that the cubics corresponding to these divisors are precisely the rational ones. Rationality has been known classically for the first family $C_{14}$. We use congruences of 5-secant conics to prove rationality for the first three of the families $C_d$, corresponding to $d=14, 26, 38$ in Hassett's notation.
A line bundle L on a smooth curve X is nonspecial if and only if L admits a presentation L=K_X -D +E for some effective divisors D and E>0 on X with gcd (D, E)=0 and h^0 (X, O_X (D))=1. In this work, we define a minimal presentation of L which is minimal with respect to the degree of E among the presentations. If L=K_X -D +E with degE>2 is a minimal, then L is very ample and any q-points of X with q <degE are embedded in general position but the points of E are not. We investigate sufficient conditions on divisors D and E for L=K_X -D +E to be minimal. Through this, for a number n in some rang…
Let $A$ be a regular 2-dimensional local ring of characteristic $p>0$, and let $L/K$ be a cyclic extension of degree $p$ of its field of fractions such that the corresponding branch divisor is normal crossing. For each $\gp\in\Spec A$ of height 1 such that $A/\gp$ is regular, consider the ramification jump $h_\gp$ of the extension of the residue field at $\gp$. In this paper the semi-continuity of $h_\gp$ with respect to Zariski topology of suitable jet spaces is proved. The asymptotic of $h_\gp$ with respect to intersection multiplicity of the prime divisor defined by $\gp$ and the branch div…
We give a log-geometric description of the space of twisted canonical divisors constructed by Farkas--Pandharipande. In particular, we introduce the notion of a principal rubber $k$-log-canonical divisor, and we study its moduli space. It is a proper Deligne--Mumford stack admitting a perfect obstruction theory whose virtual fundamental cycle is of dimension $2g-3+n$. In the so-called strictly meromorphic case with $k=1$, the moduli space is of the expected dimension and the push-forward of its virtual fundamental cycle to the moduli space of stable curves equals the weighted fundamental class…
Let C be a general connected, smooth, projective curve of positive genus g. For each nonnegative integer i we give formulas for the number of pairs (P,Q) em C x C off the diagonal such that (g+i-1)Q-(i+1)P is linearly equivalent to an effective divisor, and the number of pairs (P,Q) em C x C off the diagonal such that (g+i+1)Q-(i+1)P is linearly equivalent to a moving effective divisor.
We discuss in this short note how basic facts about divisors on moduli spaces of pointed curves give a solution to the Brill-Noether problem of nonexistence of linear series with prescribed ramification at unassigned points.
For $i\geq2$, we compute the first coefficients of the class $[\overline{D}(μ;3)]$ in the rational Picard group of the moduli of Prym curves $\overline{\mathcal{R}}_{2i}$, where $D(μ;3)$ is the divisor parametrizing pairs $[C,η]$ for which there exists a degree $2i$ map $π\colon C\rightarrow \mathbb{P}^1$ having ramification profile $(2,\ldots,2)$ above two points $q_1, q_2$, a triple ramification somewhere else and satisfying $\mathcal{O}_C(\frac{π^{*}(q_1)-π^{*}(q_2)}{2})\cong η$. Furthermore, we provide several new Prym enumerative results related to this situation.
We describe a theory of logarithmic Chow rings and tautological subrings for logarithmically smooth algebraic stacks, via a generalisation of the notion of piecewise-polynomial functions. Using this machinery we prove that the double-double ramification cycle lies in the tautological subring of the (classical) Chow ring of the moduli space of curves, and that the logarithmic double ramification cycle is divisorial (as conjectured by Molcho, Pandharipande, and Schmitt).
For a constructible étale sheaf on a smooth variety of positive characteristic ramified along an effective divisor, the largest slope in Abbes and Saito's ramification theory of the sheaf gives a divisor with rational coefficients called the conductor divisor. In this article, we prove decreasing properties of the conductor divisor after pull-backs. The main ingredient behind is the construction of étale sheaves with pure ramifications. As applications, we first prove a lower semi-continuity property for conductors of étale sheaves on relative curves in the equal characteristic case, which sup…
In the 80's D. Eisenbud and J. Harris developed the general theory of limit linear series, Invent. math. 85 (1986), in order to understand what happens to linear systems and their ramification points on families of non-singular curves degenerating to curves of compact type. They applied their theory to the study of limits of Weierstrass points, among other endeavours. In one of their articles, Invent. math. 87 (1987), they asked: "What are the limits of Weierstrass points in families of curves degenerating to stable curves not of compact type?" In this eprint we address this question within a …
We compute the class of the locus in M_g of curves having a pencil with two unspecified triple ramification points. This is the first example of a geometric divisor on M_g which is not the pull-back of a divisor on the moduli space of pseudo-stable curves. This space, in which elliptic tails are replaced by cusps, appears as a result of the first divisorial contraction in the minimal model program for M_g. In particular, we show that our divisor picks-up the locus of Fermat cubic tails when restricted to the boundary divisor of elliptic tails. We also give various enumerative applications conc…
Given a nonconstant holomorphic map f: X -> Y between compact Riemann surfaces, one of the first objects we learn to construct is its ramification divisor R_f, which describes the locus at which f fails to be locally injective. The divisor R_f is a finite formal linear combination of points of X that is combinatorially constrained by the Hurwitz formula. Now let k be an algebraically closed field that is complete with respect to a nontrivial non-Archimedean absolute value. For example, k = C_p. Here the role of a Riemann surface is played by a projective Berkovich analytic curve. As these curv…
We characterise smooth curves in P^3 whose blow-up produces a threefold with anticanonical divisor big and nef. These are curves C of degree d and genus g lying on a smooth quartic, such that (i) $4d-30 \le g\le 14$ or $(g,d) = (19,12)$, (ii) there is no 5-secant line, 9-secant conic, nor 13-secant twisted cubic to C. This generalises the classical similar situation for the blow-up of points in P^2. We describe then Sarkisov links constructed from these blow-ups, and are able to prove the existence of Sarkisov links which were previously only known as numerical possibilities.
Generalizing the well-known Green Conjecture on syzygies of canonical curves, Green and Lazarsfeld formulated in 1986 the Secant Conjecture predicting that a line bundle L of sufficiently high degree on a curve has a non-linear p-syzygy if and only if L fails to be (p+1)-very ample. Via lattice theory for special K3 surfaces, Voisin's solution of the classical Green Conjecture and calculations on moduli stacks of pointed curves, we prove: (1) The Green-Lazarsfeld Secant Conjecture in various degree of generality, including its strongest possible form in the divisorial case in the universal Jac…
We calculate the cycle class of the Hurwitz divisor $D_2$ on the moduli space of stable curves of genus $g=2k$ given by the degree $k+1$ covers of the projective line with simple ramification points, two of which lie in the same fibre. We also study some aspects of the geometry of the natural map of the Hurwitz space of admissible covers of degree $k+1$ and genus $2k$ to the moduli space of stable curves of genus $2k$.
The ring of invariant polynomials ${\mathbb C}[V]^G$ over a given finite dimensional representation space $V$ of a complex reductive group $G$ is known, by a famous theorem of Hilbert, to be finitely generated. The general proof being nonconstructive, the generators and their degrees have remained a subject of interest. In this article we determine certain divisors of the degrees of the generators. Also, for irreducible representations, we provide lower bounds for the degrees, determined by the geometric properties of the unique closed projective $G$-orbit $\mathbb X$, and more specifically it…
Using the compactified universal jacobian over the moduli space of stable marked curves, we give an expression in terms of natural classes of the zero section of the compactified universal jacobian the (rational) Chow ring. After extending variants of the Abel-Jacobi map to a locus containing curves of treelike type we give a formula for the pullback of the said zero section along these extensions. The same approach is also applied to recover known formulas for the pullback of theta divisors to the moduli space of marked stable curves.
We consider the Chow ring with rational coefficients of the Jacobian of a curve. Assume D is a divisor in a base point free g^r_d of the curve such that the canonical divisor K is a multiple of the divisor D. We find relations between tautological cycles. We give applications for curves having a degree d covering of P^1 whose ramification points are all of order d, and then for hyperelliptic curves.
Given a curve $C$ and a linear system $\ell$ on $C$, the secant locus $V_e^{e-f}( \ell )$ parametrises effective divisors of degree $e$ which impose at most $e-f$ conditions on $\ell$. For $E \to C$ a vector bundle of rank $r$, we define determinantal subschemes $H_e^{e-f} ( \ell ) \subseteq \mathrm{Hilb}^e ( \mathbb{P} E )$ and $Q_e^{e-f} (V) \subseteq \mathrm{Quot}^{0, e} ( E^* )$ which generalise $V_e^{e-f} ( \ell )$, giving several examples. We describe the Zariski tangent spaces of $Q_e^{e-f} (V)$, and give examples showing that smoothness of $Q_e^{e-f} (V)$ is not necessarily controlled …
Let $C$ be a smooth projective curve of genus $g\geq 3$ and let $η$ be an odd theta characteristic on it such that $h^0(C,η) = 1$. Pick a point $p$ from the support of $η$ and consider the one-dimensional linear system $|η+ p|$. In general this linear system is base-point free and all its ramification points (i.e. ramification points of the corresponding branched cover $C\to\mathbb P^1\simeq \mathbb PH^0(C,η+p)$) are simple. We study the locus in the moduli space of odd spin curves where the linear system $|η+ p|$ fails to have this general behavior. This locus splits into a union of three div…
In this article, we give a bound for the wild ramification of the monodromy action on the nearby cycles complex of a locally constant étale sheaf on the generic fiber of a smooth scheme over an equal characteristic trait in terms of Abbes and Saito's logarithmic ramification filtration. This provides a positive answer to the main conjecture in Isabel Leal's article "On the ramification of étale cohomology groups" for smooth morphisms in equal characteristic. We also study the ramification along vertical divisors of étale sheaves on relative curves and abelian schemes over a trait.
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We prove that the Jacobian of a general curve C of genus g=2a+1, with g>4, can be realized as a Prym-Tyurin variety for the Brill-Noether curve W^1_{a+2}(C). As a consequence of this result we are able to compute the class of the sum of the secant divisors for the curve C, embedded with a complete linear series g^{a-1}_{3a-2}
We define the characteristic cycle of a locally constant étale sheaf on a smooth variety in positive characteristic ramified along boundary as a cycle in the cotangent bundle of the variety, at least on a neighborhood of the generic point of the divisor on the boundary. The crucial ingredient in the definition is an additive structure on the boundary induced by the groupoid structure of multiple self products. We prove a compatibility with pull-back and local acyclicity in non-characteristic situations. We also give a relation with the characteristic cohomology class under a certain condition …
Let $X^n \subset P^N$ be a nonsingular, nondegenerate projective variety of dimension $n$ and codimension $N-n \ge 2$. Let $|C_X|$ be the linear system determined by the double-point divisor obtained by generically projecting $X$ to a hypersurface in $P^{n+1}$. We classify those varieties for which $C_X$ is not ample, or equivalently, does not separate points of $X$. We call such varieties Roth varieties and prove that they exist for all dimensions $n \ge 2$ and give a description of their properties. For example, in many cases Roth varieties are Castelnuovo varieties. Positivity results for t…
Let C be the union of two general connected, smooth, nonrational curves X and Y intersecting transversally at a point P. Assume that P is a general point of X or of Y. Our main result, in a simplified way, says: Let Q be a point of X. Then Q is the limit of special Weierstrass points on a family of smooth curves degenerating to C if and only if Q is not P and either of the following conditions hold: Q is a special ramification point of the linear system |K_X+(g_Y+1)P|, or Q is a ramification point of the linear system |K_X+(g_Y+1+j)P| for j=-1 or j=1 and P is a Weierstrass point of Y. Above, g…
We prove a simultaneous generalization of the classical Riemann-Hurwitz and Plucker formulas, addressing the total inflection of a morphism from a (smooth, projective) curve to an arbitrary (smooth, projective) higher-dimensional variety. Our definition of ramification is relative to an algebraic family of divisors on the target variety, and our formula is obtained using the theory of refined top Chern classes. In assigning multiplicities to ramification points, we frequently have to consider excess degeneracy loci, but we are able to show nonetheless that the multiplicities are always nonnega…
We completely describe all Brill-Noether loci on metric graphs consisting of a chain of g cycles with arbitrary edge lengths, generalizing work of Cools, Draisma, Payne, and Robeva. The structure of these loci is determined by displacement tableaux on rectangular partitions, which we define. More generally, we fix a marked point on the rightmost cycle, and completely analyze the loci of divisor classes with specified ramification at the marked point, classifying them using displacement tableaux. Our results give a tropical proof of the generalized Brill-Noether theorem for general marked curve…
Let $X$ be a del Pezzo surface of degree one over an algebraically closed field $k$, and let $K_X$ be its canonical divisor. The morphism $φ$ induced by the linear system $|-2K_X|$ realizes $X$ as a double cover of a cone in $\mathbb{P}^3$ that is ramified over a smooth curve of degree 6. The surface $X$ contains 240 curves with negative self-intersection, called exceptional curves. We prove that for a point~$P$ on the ramification curve of $φ$, at most sixteen exceptional curves go through~$P$ in characteristic $2$, and at most ten in all other characteristics. Moreover, we prove that for a p…
We study properties of the tropical double Hurwitz loci defined by Bertram, Cavalieri and Markwig. We show that all such loci are connected in codimension one. If we mark preimages of simple ramification points, then for a generic choice of such points the resulting cycles are weakly irreducible, i.e. an integer multiple of an irreducible cycle. We study how Hurwitz cycles can be written as divisors of rational functions and show that they are numerically equivalent to a tropical version of a representation as a sum of boundary divisors. The results and counterexamples in this paper were obtai…
Let $φ:Σ_1\longrightarrow \mathbb{P}^2$ be a blow up at a point on $\mathbb{P}^2$. Let $C$ be the proper transform of a smooth plane curve of degree $d\geq 4$ by $φ$, and let $P$ be a point on $C$. Let $π:\tilde{C}\longrightarrow C$ be a double covering branched along the reduced divisor on $C$ obtained as the intersection of $C$ and a reduced divisor in $|-2K_{Σ_1}|$ containing $P$. In this paper, we investigate the Weierstrass semigroup $H(\tilde{P})$ at the ramification point $\tilde{P}$ of $π$ over $P$, in the case where the intersection multiplicity at $φ(P)$ of $φ(C)$ and the tangent lin…
Consider genus $g$ curves that admit degree $d$ covers to elliptic curves only branched at one point with a fixed ramification type. The locus of such covers forms a one parameter family $Y$ that naturally maps into the moduli space of stable genus $g$ curves $\bar{\mathcal M}_{g}$. We study the geometry of $Y$, and produce a combinatorial method by which to investigate its slope, irreducible components, genus and orbifold points. As a by-product of our approach, we find some equalities from classical number theory. Moreover, a correspondence between our method and the viewpoint of square-tile…
Any arrangement of hyperplanes in general position in $P^n$ can be regarded as a divisor with normal crossing. We study the bundles of logarithmic 1-forms corresponding to such divisors` from the point of view of classification of vector bundles on $P^n$. It turns out that all such bundles are stable. The study of jumping lines of these bundles gives a unified treatment of several classical constructions associating a curve to a collection of points in $P^n$. The main result of the paper is "Torelli theorem" which says that the collection of hyperplanes can be recovered from the isomorphism cl…
Chains of minimal degree rational curves have been used as an important tool in the study of Fano manifolds. Their own geometric properties, however, have not been studied much. The goal of the paper is to introduce an infinitesimal method to study chains of minimal rational curves via varieties of minimal rational tangents and their higher secants. For many examples of Fano manifolds this method can be used to compute the minimal length of chains needed to join two general points. One consequence of our computation is a bound on the multiplicities of divisors at a general point of the moduli …
In this paper we begin to study curves on a weighted projective plane with one trivial weight, ${\mathbb P}(1,m,n)$, by determining the genus of curves of Fermat type. These are curves defined by a ``homogeneous'' polynomial analagous to the one from Fermat's last theorem. We begin by finding local coordinates for the standard affine cover of the plane, and then prove that the curve is smooth. This is done by pulling the curve up to the surface's desingularization. Then a map from the curve to ${\mathbb P^1}$ is constructed, and it's ramification divisor is determined. We conclude by applying …
We use abelianization of Higgs bundles away from the ramification divisor and fiducial solutions to analyze the large scale behaviour of Fenchel--Nielsen co-ordinates on the moduli space of rank $2$ Higgs bundles on the Riemann sphere with $5$ punctures. We solve the related Hitchin WKB problem and prove the lowest degree weighted pieces of the $P=W$ conjecture in this case.
Tropical Weierstrass points and Weierstrass weights
CNRS - Laboratoire de Mathématiques d’Orsay, Université Paris-Saclay（法国国家科学研究中心-奥赛数学实验室，巴黎萨克雷大学）；Institut de mathématiques de Marseille, Université d’Aix-Marseille, CNRS, Centrale Marseille（马赛数学研究所，艾克斯-马赛大学，法国国家科学研究中心，中央马赛）；Department of Mathematics, University of Washington — Mathematics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences（华盛顿大学数学系，国家理论科学中心）
An Ulrich sheaf on an embedded projective variety is a normalized arithmetically Cohen-Macaulay sheaf with the maximum possible number of independent sections. Ulrich sheaves are important in the theory of Chow forms, Boij-Soderberg theory, generalized Clifford algebras, and for an approach to Lech's conjecture in commutative algebra. In this note, we give a reduction of the construction of Ulrich sheaves on a projective variety X to the construction of an Ulrich sheaf for a finite map of curves, which is in turn equivalent to a higher-rank Brill-Noether problem for any of a certain class of c…
