Abstract
This paper is the second of a two-part series by the author devoted to the following fundamental problem in the theory of algebraic curves in projective space: Which reducible curves arise as limits of smooth curves of general moduli? Special cases of this question studied by Sernesi (Sernesi, Edoardo (1984) On the existence of certain families of curves. Invent Math 75(1): 488 25-57 ), Ballico (Ballico, Edoardo (2012) Embeddings of general curves in projective spaces: the range of the quadrics. Lith Math J 52(2): 134-137 ), and others have been critical in the resolution of many problems in the theory of algebraic curves over the past half century. In this paper, we give sharp bounds on this problem for space curves, when the nodes are general points and the components are general in moduli. We also systematically study a variant in projective spaces of arbitrary dimension when the nodes are general in a hyperplane. The results given here significantly extend those cases established in the previous paper in this series (Eric Larson, Constructing reducible Brill-Noether curves, To appear in documentamathematica, arxiv:1603.02301), as well as those cases established by Sernesi (Sernesi, Edoardo (1984) On the existence of certain families of curves. Invent Math 75(1): 488 25-57 ), Ballico (Ballico, Edoardo (2012) Embeddings of general curves in projective spaces: the range of the quadrics. Lith Math J 52(2): 134-137 ) , and others. As explained in (Eric Larson, Degenerations of curves in projective space and the maximal rank conjecture, arXiv:1809.05980), the reducible curves constructed in this paper also play a critical role in the author’s proof of the maximal rank conjecture in a subsequent paper (Eric Larson Degenerations of curves in projective space and the maximal rank conjecture, arXiv:1809.05980).
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Atanasov, Atanas, Larson, Eric, Yang, David: Interpolation for normal bundles of general curves. Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 257(1234), 105 (2019)
Ballico, Edoardo: Embeddings of general curves in projective spaces: the range of the quadrics. Lith. Math. J. 52(2), 134–137 (2012)
Clebsch, A.: Zur Theorie der Riemann’schen Fläche. Math. Ann. 6(2), 216–230 (1873)
Gieseker, David: Stable curves and special divisors: Petri’s conjecture. Invent. Math. 66(2), 251–275 (1982)
Griffiths, Phillip, Harris, Joseph: On the variety of special linear systems on a general algebraic curve. Duke Math. J. 47(1), 233–272 (1980)
Hartshorne,R., Hirschowitz,A.: Smoothing algebraic space curves, Algebraic geometry, Sitges (Barcelona), 1983, Lecture Notes in Math., vol. 1124, Springer, Berlin, 1985, pp. 98–131
Hirschowitz, A.: Sur la postulation générique des courbes rationnelles. Acta Math. 146(3–4), 209–230 (1981)
Steven Kleiman and Dan Laksov, On the existence of special divisors, Amer. J. Math. 94 , 431–436.(1972)
Eric Larson, Constructing reducible Brill–Noether curves, To appear in documenta mathematica, arXiv:1603.02301
Eric Larson, Degenerations of curves in projective space and the maximal rank conjecture, arXiv:1809.05980
Eric Larson, The maximal rank conjecture, arXiv:1711.04906
Eric Larson, Interpolation for curves in projective space with bounded error, Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN (2021), no. 15, 11426–11451. 4294122
Sernesi, Edoardo: On the existence of certain families of curves. Invent. Math. 75(1), 25–57 (1984)
Severi, Francesco: Sulla classificazione delle curve algebriche e sul teorema di esistenza di riemann. Rend. R. Acc. Naz. Lincei 241(5), 877–888 (1915)
Vogt, Isabel: Interpolation for Brill-Noether space curves. Manuscripta Math. 156(1–2), 137–147 (2018)
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Joe Harris for his guidance throughout this research, as well as other members of the Harvard and MIT mathematics departments for helpful conversations. The author would also like to acknowledge the generous support both of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, the Department of Defense (NDSEG fellowship), and the National Science Foundation (MSPRF grant DMS-1802908). Finally, the author would like to thank the anonymous referee for many helpful suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Data Availability
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Larson, E. Constructing reducible Brill–Noether curves II. manuscripta math. 172, 75–88 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00229-022-01408-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00229-022-01408-9