On the Lüroth semigroup of curves lying on a smooth quadric

Abstract

For a smooth irreducible complete algebraic curveC the “gaps” are the integersn such that every linear series of degreen has at least a base point. The Lüroth semigroup S_C of a curveC is the subsemigroup ofN whose elements are not gaps. In this paper we deal with irreducible smooth curves of type (a, b) on a smooth quadricQ. The main result is an algorithm by which we can say if some integer λ∈N is a gap or is in S_C. In the general case there are integers λ which are undecidable. For curves such as complete intersection, arithmetically Cohen-Macaulay or Buchsbaum, we are able to describe explicitly “intervals” of gaps and “intervals” of integers which belong to S_C. For particular cases we can completely determine S_C, by giving just the type of the curve (in particular the degree and the genus).