It is well known since Noether that the gonality of a smooth plane curve of degree d>3 is d-1. Given a k-dimensional complex projective variety X, the most natural extension of gonality is probably the degree of irrationality, that is the minimum degree of a dominant rational map from X to $\mathbb{P}^k$. In this paper we are aimed at extending the assertion on plane curves to smooth hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{P}^n$ in terms of degree of irrationality. We prove that both surfaces in $\mathbb{P}^3$ and threefolds in $\mathbb{P}^4$ of sufficiently large degree d have degree of irrationality d-1, except for finitely many cases we classify, whose degree of irrationality is d-2. To this aim we use Mumford's technique of induced differentials and we shift the problem to study first order congruences of lines of $\mathbb{P}^n$. In particular, we also slightly improve the description of such congruences in $\mathbb{P}^4$ and we provide a bound on degree of irrationality of hypersurfaces of arbitrary dimension.
A Brill-Noether locus is a subvariety of M_g consisting of curves having certain linear series g^r_d. We study the relative position of Brill-Noether loci with respect to the gonality stratification of M_g. We construct smooth curves in P^r of given degree and genus and having the `expected' gonality. As an application we give a new proof of our result about the Kodaira dimension of the moduli space of curves of genus 23.
We describe a conjectural stratification of the Brill-Noether variety for general curves of fixed genus and gonality. As evidence for this conjecture, we show that this Brill-Noether variety has at least as many irreducible components as predicted by the conjecture, and that each of these components has the expected dimension. Our proof uses combinatorial and tropical techniques. Specifically, we analyze containment relations between the various strata of tropical Brill-Noether loci identified by Pflueger in his classification of special divisors on chains of loops.
This paper concerns the existence of curves with low gonality on smooth hypersurfaces of sufficiently large degree. It has been recently proved that if $X\subset \mathbb{P}^{n+1}$ is a hypersurface of degree $d\geq n+2$, and if $C\subset X$ is an irreducible curve passing through a general point of $X$, then its gonality verifies $\mathrm{gon}(C)\geq d-n$, and equality is attained on some special hypersurfaces. We prove that if $X\subset \mathbb{P}^{n+1}$ is a very general hypersurface of degree $d\geq 2n+2$, the least gonality of an irreducible curve $C\subset X$ passing through a general poi…
We study the existence of linear series on curves lying on an Enriques surface and general in their complete linear system. Using a method that works also below the Bogomolov-Reider range, we compute, in all cases, the gonality of such curves. We also give a new result about the positive cone of line bundles on an Enriques surface and we show how this relates to the gonality.
We prove a generalization of the Brill-Noether theorem for the variety of special divisors $W^r_d(C)$ on a general curve $C$ of prescribed gonality. Our main theorem gives a closed formula for the dimension of $W^r_d(C)$. We build on previous work of Pflueger, who used an analysis of the tropical divisor theory of special chains of cycles to give upper bounds on the dimensions of Brill--Noether varieties on such curves. We prove his conjecture, that this upper bound is achieved for a general curve. Our methods introduce logarithmic stable maps as a systematic tool in Brill-Noether theory. A pr…
The gonality sequence $(d_r)_{r\geq1}$ of a smooth algebraic curve comprises the minimal degrees $d_r$ of linear systems of rank $r$. We explain two approaches to compute the gonality sequence of smooth curves in $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$: a tropical and a classical approach. The tropical approach uses the recently developed Brill--Noether theory on tropical curves and Baker's specialization of linear systems from curves to metric graphs. The classical one extends the work of Hartshorne on plane curves to curves on $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$.
We generalize, for integral curves, a celebrated result of Max Noether on global sections of the n-dualizing sheaf of a smooth nonhyperelliptic curve. This is our main result. We also obtain an embedding of a non-Gorenstein curve in a way that we can express the dimensions of the components of the ideal in terms of the main invariants of the curve. Afterwards we focus on gonality, Clifford index and Koszul cohomology of non-Gorenstein curves by allowing torsion free sheaves of rank 1 in their definitions. We find an upper bound for the gonality, which agrees with Brill-Noether's one for a rati…
Noether's problem asks whether, for a given field K and finite group G, the fixed field L := K(x_h : h \in G)^G is a purely transcendental extension of K, where G acts on the x_h by gx_h = x_gh. The field L is naturally the function field of a quotient variety V := V (K,G). In analogy to the case of curves, we define the gonality of V to be the minimal degree of a dominant rational map from V to projective space, which, in a sense, measures the extent to which L may fail to be purely transcendental over K. When G is abelian, we give bounds for the gonality of V (K; G).
This note is an appendix to 'Measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree' by L. Ein, R. Lazarsfeld and B. Ullery. We prove an existence result for families of curves having low gonality, and lying on fundamental loci of first order congruences of lines in $\mathbb{P}^{n+1}$. As an application, we follow the ideas of the main paper, and we present a slight refinement of a theorem included in it. In particular, we show that given a very general hypersurface $X\subset \mathbb{P}^{n+1}$ of degree $d \geq 3n-2 \geq 7$, and a dominant rational map $f \colon X \dashrightarrow \mathbb{…
We use Young tableaux to compute the dimension of $V^r$, the Prym-Brill-Noether locus of a folded chain of loops of any gonality. This tropical result yields a new upper bound on the dimensions of algebraic Prym-Brill-Noether loci. Moreover, we prove that $V^r$ is pure-dimensional and connected in codimension $1$ when $\dim V^r \geq 1$. We then compute the first Betti number of this locus for even gonality when the dimension is exactly $1$, and compute the cardinality when the locus is finite and the edge lengths are generic.
For a projective nonsingular curve of genus $g$, the Brill-Noether locus $W^r_d(C)$ parametrizes line bundles of degree $d$ over $C$ with at least $r+1$ sections. When the curve is generic and the Brill-Noether number $ρ(g,r,d)$ equals $1$, one can then talk of the \emph{Brill-Noether curve}. In this paper, we explore the first two invariants of this curve, giving a new way of calculating the genus of this curve and computing its gonality when $C$ has genus 5.
In this article we study Brill-Noether loci of moduli space of stable bundles over smooth surfaces. We define Petri map as an analogy with the case of curves. We show the non-emptiness of certain Brill-Noether loci over very general quintic hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^3$, and use the Petri map to produce components of expected dimension.
The Brill-Noether Theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a linear series. Here we consider a general n-fold, etale cyclic cover p of a curve C of genus g and investigate for which numbers r,d a linear series of dimension r and degree d exists on the covering curve. For r=1 this gives gonality. Using degeneration to a special singular example (containing a Castelnuovo canonical curve) and the theory of of limit linear series for tree-like curves we show that the Plücker formula yields a necessary condition for the existence of a linear series (of dimension r, deg…
We discuss the role of K3 surfaces in the context of Mercat's conjecture in higher rank Brill-Noether theory. Using liftings of Koszul classes, we show that Mercat's conjecture in rank 2 fails for any number of sections and for any gonality stratum along a Noether-Lefschetz divisor inside the locus of curves lying on K3 surfaces. Then we show that Mercat's conjecture in rank 3 fails even for curves lying on K3 surfaces with Picard number 1. Finally, we provide a detailed proof of Mercat's conjecture in rank 2 for general curves of genus 11, and describe explicitly the action of the Fourier-Muk…
Hesse claimed that an irreducible projective hypersurface in $\PP^n$ defined by an equation with vanishing hessian determinant is necessarily a cone. Gordan and Noether proved that this is true for $n\leq 3$ and constructed counterexamples for every $n\geq 4$. Gordan and Noether and Franchetta gave classification of hypersurfaces in $\PP^4$ with vanishing hessian and which are not cones. Here we translate in geometric terms Gordan and Noether approach, providing direct geometrical proofs of these results.
We show that the non-Archimedean skeleton of the Prym variety associated to an unramified double cover of an algebraic curve is naturally isomorphic (as a principally polarized tropical abelian variety) to the tropical Prym variety of the associated tropical double cover. This confirms a conjecture by Jensen and the first author. We prove a new upper bound on the dimension of the Prym-Brill-Noether locus for generic unramified double covers of curves with fixed even gonality on the base. Our methods also give a new proof of the classical Prym-Brill-Noether Theorem for generic unramified double…
We consider a general curve of fixed gonality k and genus g. We propose an estimate for the dimension of the variety $W^r_d(C)$ of special linear series on C, by solving an analogous problem in tropical geometry. Using work of Coppens and Martens, we prove that this estimate is exactly correct if k is at least g/5 + 2, and is an upper bound in all other cases. We also completely characterize the cases in which $W^r_d(C)$ has the same dimension as for a general curve of genus g.
We study various measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree in projective space and other varieties. These include the least degree of a rational covering of projective space, and the minimal gonality of a covering family of curves. The theme is that positivity properties of canonical bundles lead to lower bounds on these invariants. In particular, we prove that if X is a very general smooth hypersurface of dimension n and degree d \ge 2n+1, then any dominant rational mapping from X to projective n-space must have degree at least d-1. We also propose a number of open problems,…
Let $C\subset \mathbb P^r$ be an integral projective curve. We define the speciality index $e(C)$ of $C$ as the maximal integer $t$ such that $h^0(C,ω_C(-t))>0$, where $ω_C$ denotes the dualizing sheaf of $C$. In the present paper we consider $C\subset \mathbb P^5$ an integral degree $d$ curve and we denote by $s$ the minimal degree for which there exists a hypersurface of degree $s$ containing $C$. We assume that $C$ is contained in two smooth hypersurfaces $F$ and $G$, with $deg(F)=n>k=deg (G)$. We assume additionally that $F$ is Noether-Lefschetz general, i.e. that the $2$-th Néron-Severi g…
Let $Z$ be a closed subscheme of a smooth complex projective complete intersection variety $Y\subseteq \Ps^N$, with $dim Y=2r+1\geq 3$. We describe the Néron-Severi group $NS_r(X)$ of a general smooth hypersurface $X\subset Y$ of sufficiently large degree containing $Z$.
Given a smooth hypersurface $X\subset \mathbb{P}^{n+1}$ of degree $d\geqslant 2$, we study the cones $V^h_p\subset \mathbb{P}^{n+1}$ swept out by lines having contact order $h\geqslant 2$ at a point $p\in X$. In particular, we prove that if $X$ is general, then for any $p\in X$ and $2 \leqslant h\leqslant \min\{ n+1,d\}$, the cone $V^h_p$ has dimension exactly $n+2-h$. Moreover, when $X$ is a very general hypersurface of degree $d\geqslant 2n+2$, we describe the relation between the cones $V^h_p$ and the degree of irrationality of $k$--dimensional subvarieties of $X$ passing through a general …
We study Brill-Noether existence on a finite graph using methods from polyhedral geometry and lattices. We start by formulating analogues of the Brill-Noether conjectures (both the existence and non-existence parts) for $\mathbb{R}$-divisors, i.e. divisors with real coefficients, on a graph. We then reformulate the Brill-Noether existence conjecture for $\mathbb{R}$-divisors on a graph in geometric terms, that we refer to as the covering radius conjecture and we show a weak version, in support of it. Using this, we show an approximate version of the Brill-Noether existence conjecture for divis…
Let $Z$ be a closed subscheme of a smooth complex projective variety $Y\subseteq \Ps^N$, with $\dim\,Y=2r+1\geq 3$. We describe the intermediate Néron-Severi group (i.e. the image of the cycle map $A_r(X)\to H_{2r}(X;\mathbb{Z})$) of a general smooth hypersurface $X\subset Y$ of sufficiently large degree containing $Z$.
We continue our study of the Noether-Lefschetz loci in toric varieties and investigate deformation of pairs (V,X) where V is a complete intersection subvariety and X a quasi-smooth hypersurface in a odd dimensional simplicial projective toric variety, with V\subset X. Under some assumptions, we prove that the cohomological class in H^{k,k}(X) associated to V remains of type (k,k) under an infinitesimal deformation if and only if V remains algebraic. Actually we prove that locally the Noether-Lefschetz locus is an irreducible component of a suitable Hilbert scheme. This generalizes Theorem 4.2 …
We enumerate smooth rational curves on very general Weierstrass fibrations over hypersurfaces in projective space. The generating functions for these numbers lie in the ring of classical modular forms. The method of proof uses topological intersection products on a period stack and the cohomological theta correspondence of Kudla and Millson for special cycles on a locally symmetric space of orthogonal type. The results here apply only in base degree 1, but heuristics for higher base degree match predictions from the topological string partition function.
For a fixed integer $d$, we study here the locus of degree $d$ hypersurfaces $X$ in $\mathbb{P}^{2n+1}$ such that $H^{2n}(X,\mathbb{Q}) \cap H^{n,n}(X,\mathbb{C}) \not= \mathbb{Q}$. We call this locus \textit{the Noether-Lefschetz locus}. Any irreducible component of this locus is locally a Hodge locus. So, we see that the study of this locus is very closely related to the variational Hodge conjecture. In this article we show that the Hodge locus corresponding to the cohomology class of a complete intersection subscheme in $\mathbb{P}^{2n+1}$ of codimension $n+1$ and degree less than $d$ satis…
Let $X$ be a smooth quartic hypersurface in $\mathbb{P}^3$. By the Brill-Noether theory of curves on K3 surfaces, if a rank 2 aCM bundle on $X$ is globally generated, then it is the Lazarsfeld-Mukai bundle $E_{C,Z}$ associated with a smooth curve $C$ on $X$ and a base point free pencil $Z$ on $C$. In this paper, we will focus on the classification of such bundles on $X$ to investigate aCM bundles of rank 2 on $X$. Concretely, we will give a necessary condition for a rank 2 vector bundle of type $E_{C,Z}$ to be indecomposable initialized and aCM, in the case where the class of $C$ in Pic($X$) i…
We establish the Hodge conjecture for some subvarieties of a class of toric varieties. First we study quasi-smooth intersections in a projective simplicial toric variety, which is a suitable notion to generalize smooth complete intersection subvarieties in the toric environment, and in particular quasi-smooth hypersurfaces. We show that under appropriate conditions, the Hodge Conjecture holds for a very general quasi-smooth intersection subvariety, generalizing the work on quasi-smooth hypersurfaces of the first author and Grassi in [3]. We also show that the Hodge Conjecture holds asymptotica…
If $X = V(f) \subset \mathbb P^N$ is a reduced complex hypersurface, the hessian of $f$ (or by abusing the terminology the hessian of $X$) is the determinant of the matrix of the second derivatives of the form $f$, that is the determinant of the hessian matrix of $f$. Hypersurfaces with vanishing hessian were studied systematically for the first time in the fundamental paper [GN], where Gordan and M. Noether analyze Hesse's claims in [Hesse1, Hesse2] according to which these hypersurfaces are necessarily cones. Of course cones have vanishing hessian. Clearly the claim is true if deg(X)=2 so th…
Let $X={\bf P}^2\times{\bf P}^{n-1}$ embedded with $Ø(1,2)$. We prove that its $(n+1)$-secant variety $σ_{n+1}(X)$ is a hypersurface, while it is expected that it fills the ambient space. The equation of $σ_{n+1}(X)$ is the symmetric analog of the Strassen equation. When $n=4$ the determinantal map takes $σ_5(X)$ to the hypersurface of Lüroth quartics, which is the image of the Barth map studied by LePotier and Tikhomirov. This hint allows to obtain some results on the jumping lines and the Brill-Noether loci of symplectic bundles on ${\bf P}^2$ by using the higher secant varieties of $X$.
In this paper we give a simple Torelli type theorem for curves of genus 6 and 8 by showing that these curves can be reconstructed from their Brill-Noether varieties. Among other results, it is shown that the focal variety of a general, canonical and nonhyperelliptic curve of genus 6 is a hypersurface.
For a projective variety $Z$ and for any integer $p$, define the $p$-th Néron-Severi group $NS_p(Z)$ of $Z$ as the image of the cycle map $A_{p}(Z)\to H_{2p}(Z; \mathbb{C})$. Now let $X\subset \Ps^{2m+1}$ ($m\geq 1$) be a projective variety of dimension $2m-1$, with isolated singularities, complete intersection of a smooth hypersurface of degree $k$, with a hypersurface of degree $n>max\{k, 2m+1\}$, and let $F$ be a general hypersurface of degree $n$ containing $X$. We prove that the natural map $NS_m(X)\to NS_m(F)$ is surjective, and that if $dim NS_m(F)=1$ then $dim NS_m(X)=1$. In particular…
Let $C$ be a curve in $\mathbb{P}^4$ and $X$ be a hypersurface containing it. We show how it is possible to construct a matrix factorization on $X$ from the pair $(C,X)$ and, conversely, how a matrix factorization on $X$ leads to curves lying on $X$. We use this correspondence to prove the unirationality of the Hurwitz space $\mathcal{H}_{12,8}$ and the uniruledness of the Brill-Noether space $\mathcal{W}^1_{13,9}$. Several unirational families of curves of genus $16 \leq g \leq 20$ in $\mathbb{P}^4$ are also exhibited.
Let $Y$ be a smooth complex projective variety. We study the cohomology of smooth families of hypersurfaces $X\to B$ for $B\subset{\bf P}H^0(Y,O(d))$ a codimension $c$ subvariety. We give an asymptotically optimal bound on $c$ and $k$ for $d\to\infty$ for the space $H^k(X,\C)$ not to be spanned by the image of $H^k(Y\times B,\C)$, thus extending the validity of Lefschetz Hyperplane section Theorem and Nori's Connectivity Theorem. Next, we construct in the limit case explicit families of higher Chow groups which span the non trivial cohomology classes in $X$. We give examples of indecomposable …
