In this paper we review the notions of gonality and Clifford index of an abstract curve. For a curve embedded in a projective space, we investigate the connection between the \ci of the curve and the \gc al properties of its \emb. In particular if $C$ is a curve of degree $d$ in $¶^3$, and if $L$ is a multisecant of maximum order $k$, then the pencil of planes through $L$ cuts out a $g^1_{d-k}$ on $C$. If the gonality of $C$ is equal to $d-k$ we say the gonality of $C$ can be computed by multisecants. We discuss the question whether the \go of every smooth ACM curve in $¶^3$ can be computed by multisecants, and we show the answer is yes in some special cases.
Let C be an ACM (projectively normal) nondegenerate smooth curve in projective 3-space, and suppose C is general in its Hilbert scheme - this is irreducible once the postulation is fixed. Answering a question posed by Peskine, we show the gonality of C is d-l, where d is the degree of the curve, and l is the maximum order of a multisecant line of C. Furthermore l=4 except for two series of cases, in which the postulation of C forces every surface of minimum degree containing C to contain a line as well. We compute the value of l in terms of the postulation of C in these exceptional cases. We a…
We extend the notion of Clifford index to reduced curves with planar singularities by considering rank 1 torsion free sheaves. We investigate the behaviour of the Clifford index with respect to the combinatorial properties of the curve and we show that Green's conjecture holds for certain classes of curves given by the union of two irreducible components.
In this paper, we remove a technical hypothesis from a previous paper. This allows us to construct stable bundles of rank 2 with Clifford index significantly smaller than the classical Clifford index on suitably chosen curves of any genus $\ge13$.
We complete our study of linear series on curves lying on an Enriques surface by showing that, with the exception of smooth plane quintics, there are no exceptional curves on Enriques surfaces, that is, curves for which the Clifford index is not computed by a pencil.
We determine the gonality and the Clifford index for curves on a compact smooth toric surface. Moreover, it is shown that their gonality are computed by pencils on the ambient surface. From the geometrical view point, this means that the gonality can be read off from the lattice polygon associated to the curve.
Two definitions of the Clifford index for vector bundles on a smooth projective curve $C$ of genus $g\ge4$ were introduced in a previous paper by the authors. In another paper the authors obtained results on one of these indices for bundles of rank 3. In this paper we extend these results in the case where $C$ has classical Clifford index 3. In particular we prove Mercat's conjecture for bundles of rank 3 for $g \leq 8$ and $g \geq 13$ when $C$ has classical Clifford index 3. We obtain complete results in the case of genus 7.
We prove new slope inequalities for relatively minimal fibred surfaces, showing an influence of the relative irregularity, of the unitary rank and of the Clifford index on the slope. The argument uses Xiao's method and a new Clifford-type inequality for subcanonical systems on non-hyperelliptic curves.
Let $C$ be a smooth irreducible projective algebraic curve defined over the complex numbers. The notion of the Clifford index of $C$ was extended a few years ago to semistable bundles of any rank. Recent work has been focussed mainly on the rank-2 Clifford index, although interesting results have also been obtained for the case of rank 3. In this paper we extend this work, obtaining improved lower bounds for the rank-3 Clifford index. This allows the first computations of the rank-3 index in non-trivial cases and examples for which the rank-3 index is greater than the rank-2 index.
Let $X$ be a smooth projective K3 surface over complex numbers and $C$ be an ample curve on $X$. In this paper we will study the semistability of the Lazarsfeld-Mukai bundle $E_{C, A}$ associated to a line bundle $A$ ion $C$ such that $|A|$ is a pencil on $C$ and computes the Clifford index of $C$. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for $E_{C, A}$ being semistable.
This is the author's 2008 thesis from the University of Chicago. We generalize the notion of the Clifford index to an arbitrary very ample line bundle and show how it determines when a curve and its various secant varieties have determinantal equations. In particular we establish the scheme theoretic version of a conjecture of Eisenbud-Koh-Stillman. If $L_1$ and $L_2$ are line bundles of degree at least $2g+1+k$, then ${\rm Sec}^j(C)$ is determinantally presented for $j \leq k$ and for $j \leq k+1$ if $L_1 \neq L_2$. We also give a geometric characterization of the standard Clifford index in t…
Let $C$ be a smooth curve of genus $g\ge 4$ and Clifford index $c$. In this paper, we prove that if $C$ is neither hyperelliptic nor bielliptic with $g\ge 2c+5$ and $\mathcal M$ computes the Clifford index of $C$, then either $°\mathcal M\le \frac{3c}{2}+3$ or $|\mathcal M|=|g^1_{c+2}+h^1_{c+2}|$ and $g=2c+5$. This strengthens the Coppens and Martens' theorem (\cite{CM}, Corollary 3.2.5). Furthermore, for the latter case (1) $\mathcal M$ is half-canonical unless $C$ is a $\frac{c+2}{2}$-fold covering of an elliptic curve, (2) $\mathcal M(F)$ fails to be normally generated with $\cli(\mathcal M…
For smooth projective curves the Clifford index is an important invariant which provides a bound for the dimension of the space of sections of a line bundle. This is the first step in distinguishing curves of the same genus. In this paper we generalise this to introduce Clifford indices for semistable vector bundles on curves. We study these invariants, giving some basic properties and carrying out some computations for small ranks and for general and some special curves. For curves whose classical Clifford index is two, we compute all values of our new Clifford indices.
Let $(X,H)$ be a polarized K3 surface with $\mathrm{Pic}(X) = \mathbb Z H$, and let $C\in |H|$ be a smooth curve of genus $g$. We give an upper bound on the dimension of global sections of a semistable vector bundle on $C$. This allows us to compute the higher rank Clifford indices of $C$ with high genus. In particular, when $g\geq r^2\geq 4$, the rank $r$ Clifford index of $C$ can be computed by the restriction of Lazarsfeld-Mukai bundles on $X$ corresponding to line bundles on the curve $C$. This is a generalization of the result by Green and Lazarsfeld for curves on K3 surfaces to higher ra…
We prove that the genus $g$, the relative irregularity $q_f$ and the Clifford index $c_f$ of a non-isotrivial fibration $f$ satisfy the inequality $q_f \leq g - c_f$. This gives in particular a proof of Xiao's conjecture for fibrations whose general fibres have maximal Clifford index.
It has been a long-standing problem to find an adequate definition of a Clifford index for higher rank vector bundles on curves, which should capture the complexity of the curve in its moduli space. An interesting proposal in rank 2 has been put forward by Mercat, who conjectured that the second Clifford index of a curve should be equal to its classical Clifford index, defined in terms of gonality. Using moduli of sheaves on generic K3 surfaces, we prove Mercat's conjecture for generic curves of every genus. Furthermore, for odd g we identify an effective divisor in the moduli space M_g along …
In this note we use an example of Mukai to construct semistable bundles of rank 3 with 6 independent sections on a curve of genus 9 or 11 with Clifford index strictly less than the Clifford index of the curve. The example also allows us to show the non-emptiness of some Brill-Noether loci with negative expected dimension.
We extend the results of Pareschi on the constancy of the gonality and Clifford index of smooth curves in a complete linear system on Del Pezzo surfaces of degrees $\geq 2$ to the case of Del Pezzo surfaces of degree 1, where we explicitly classify the cases where the gonality and Clifford index are not constant. We also classify all cases of exceptional curves on Del Pezzo surfaces, which turn out to be the smooth plane curves and some other cases with Clifford dimension 3. Moreover, the property of being exceptional holds for all curves in the complete linear system. Furthermore, we relate t…
Green's conjecture is proved for smooth curves C lying on a rational surface S with an anticanonical pencil, under some mild hypotheses on the line bundle L defined by C. Constancy of Clifford dimension, Clifford index and gonality of curves in the linear system |L| is also obtained.
By comparing the Postnikov towers of the classifying spaces of projective unitary groups and the differentials in a twisted Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence, we deduce a lower bound on the topological index in terms of the period, and solve the topological version of the period-index problem in full for finite CW complexes of dimension at most 6. Conditions are established that, if they were met in the cohomology of a smooth complex 3-fold variety, would disprove the ordinary period-index conjecture. Examples of higher-dimensional varieties meeting these conditions are provided. We use our …
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…
The main purpose in this paper is to study the gonality, the Clifford index and the Clifford dimension on linearly equivalent smooth curves on Enriques surfaces. The method is similar to techniques of M.Green $\&$ R.Lazarsfeld and G.Pareschi.
Let S be a K3 surface and assume for simplicity that it does not contain any (-2)-curve. Using coherent systems, we express every non-simple Lazarsfeld-Mukai bundle on S as an extension of two sheaves of some special type, that we refer to as generalized Lazarsfeld-Mukai bundles. This has interesting consequences concerning the Brill-Noether theory of curves C lying on S. From now on, let g denote the genus of C and A be a complete linear series of type g^r_d on C such that d<= g-1 and the corresponding Brill-Noether number is negative. First, we focus on the cases where A computes the Cliffor…
The dimension of spaces of global sections for line bundles on semistable curves parametrized by the compactified Picard scheme is studied. The theorem of Riemann is shown to hold. The theorem of Clifford is shown to hold in the following cases: the curve has two components; the curve is any semistable curve and the degree is either 0 or 2g-2; the curve is stable, free from separating nodes, and the degree is at most 4. These results are all shown to be sharp. Applications to the Clifford index, to the combinatorial description of hyperelliptic curves, and to plane quintics are given.
On a metric graph we introduce the notion of a free divisor as a replacement for the notion of a base point free complete linear system on a curve. By means of an example we show that the Clifford inequality is the only obstruction for the existence of very special free divisors on a graph. This is different from the situation of base point free linear systems on curves. It gives rise to the existence of many types of divisors on graphs that cannot be lifted to curves maintaining the rank and it also shows that classifications made for linear systems of some fixed small positive Clifford index…
Let $f: S\longrightarrow B$ be a non-trivial fibration from a complex projective smooth surface $S$ to a smooth curve $B$ of genus $b$. Let $c_f$ the Clifford index of the generic fibre $F$ of $f$. In [arXiv:1401.7502v4] it is proved that the relative irregularity of $f$, $q_f=h^{1,0}(S)-b$ is less than or equal to $g(F)-c_f$. In particular this proves the (modified) Xiao's conjecture: $q_f\le 1+g(F)/2$ for fibrations of general Clifford index. In this short note we assume that the generic fiber of $f$ is a plane curve of degree $d\ge 5$ and we prove that $q_f\le g(F)-c_f-1$. In particular we …
