arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Gavril Farkas.
These lectures discuss recent advances on syzygies on algebraic curves, especially concerning the Green, the Prym-Green and the Green-Lazarsfeld Secant Conjectures. The methods used are largely geometric and variational, with a special emphasis on examples and explicit calculations. The notes are based on series of lectures given in Daejeon (March 2013), Rome (November-December 2015) and Guanajuato (February 2016).
Using the isomorphism between the moduli space of polarized K3 surfaces of genus 14 and the moduli space of special cubic fourfolds of discriminant 26, we establish the rationality of the universal K3 surface of genus 14. Precisely, we show that the universal K3 surface of genus 14 is a projective bundle over a certain moduli space of nodal scrolls in P^5, whose rationality we prove using a degenerate version of Mukai's structure theorem for curves of genus 8.
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 which the Mercat Conjecture fails and we compute its slope, which is shown to be equal to 6+12/(g+1).
We carry out a complete birational classification of the universal theta divisor Th_g over the moduli space of curves of genus g, and show that Th_g enjoys good rationality properties for g<12, and is a variety of general type for g\geq 12. The key ingredient is an intersection-theoretic study of the universal antiramification locus of the Gauss map. We also present a complete classification of the universal symmetric product of degree g-2 over M_g.
The Prym-Green Conjecture predicts that the resolution of a generic n-torsion paracanonical curve of every genus is natural. The conjecture has mostly been studied so far for level 2, that is, for Prym-canonical curves. Using a construction of Barth and Verra that realizes torsion bundles on sections of special K3 surfaces, we prove the Prym-Green Conjecture for curves of odd genus g and torsion bundles of sufficiently high order with respect to g. We also give partial results in even genus. In the process, we confirm the expectation of Barth and Verra concerning the number of curves in a fixed linear system on a K3 surface, having an n-torsion line bundle induced by restriction from the K3 surface.
The moduli space of canonical divisors (with prescribed zeros and poles) on nonsingular curves is not compact since the curve may degenerate. We define a proper moduli space of twisted canonical divisors in the moduli space of Deligne-Mumford stable pointed curves which includes the space of canonical divisors as an open subset. The theory leads to geometric/combinatorial constraints on the closures of the moduli spaces of canonical divisors. In case the differentials have at least one pole (the strictly meromorphic case), the moduli spaces of twisted canonical divisors on genus g curves are of pure codimension g in the moduli spaces of stable pointed curves. In addition to the closure of the canonical divisors on nonsingular curves, the moduli spaces have virtual components. In the Appendix, a complete proposal relating the sum of the fundamental classes of all components (with intrinsic multiplicities) to a formula of Pixton is proposed. The result is a precise and explicit conjecture in the tautological ring for the weighted fundamental class of the moduli spaces of twisted canonical divisors. As a consequence of the conjecture, the classes of the closures of the moduli spaces of canonical divisors on nonsingular curves are determined (both in the holomorphic and meromorphic cases).
Let $p_1,\dots, p_9$ be the points in $\mathbb A^2(\mathbb Q)\subset \mathbb P^2(\mathbb Q)$ with coordinates $$(-2,3),(-1,-4),(2,5),(4,9),(52,375), (5234, 37866),(8, -23), (43, 282), \Bigl(\frac{1}{4}, -\frac{33}{8} \Bigr)$$ respectively. We prove that, for any genus $g$, a plane curve of degree $3g$ having a $g$-tuple point at $p_1,\dots, p_8$, and a $(g-1)$-tuple point at $p_9$, and no other singularities, exists and is a Brill-Noether general curve of genus $g$, while a general curve in that $g$-dimensional linear system is a Brill-Noether-Petri general curve of genus $g$.
We present a structure theorem for the moduli space R_7 of Prym curves of genus 7 as a projective bundle over the moduli space of 7-nodal rational curves. The existence of this parametrization implies the unirationality of R_7 and that of the moduli space of Nikulin surfaces of genus 7, as well as the rationality of the moduli space of Nikulin surfaces of genus 7 with a distinguished line. Using the results in genus 7, we then establish that R_8 is uniruled.
The classical Castelnuovo numbers count linear series of minimal degree and fixed dimension on a general curve, in the case when this number is finite. For pencils, that is, linear series of dimension one, the Castelnuovo numbers specialize to the better known Catalan numbers. Using the Fulton-Pragacz determinantal formula for flag bundles and combinatorial manipulations, we obtain a compact formula for the number of linear series on a general curve having prescribed ramification at an arbitrary point, in the case when the expected number of such linear series is finite. The formula is then used to solve some enumerative problems on moduli spaces of curves.
We study the enumerative geometry of the moduli space R_g of Prym varieties of dimension g-1 (also known as the space of admissible double covers). Our main result is that the compactification of R_g is of general type as soon as g>13. We achieve this by computing the class of two types of cycles on R_g: one defined in terms of Koszul cohomology of Prym curves, the other defined in terms of Raynaud theta divisors associated to certain vector bundles on curves. We formulate a Prym-Green conjecture on syzygies of Prym-canonical curves. In the appendix we show that even though R_g has non-canonical singularities, pluricanonical forms on R_g extend to any desingularization.
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 Jacobian. (2) The Prym-Green Conjecture on the naturality of the resolution of a general Prym-canonical curve of odd genus.
We describe the singular locus of the compactification of the moduli space $R_{g,l}$ of curves of genus $g$ paired with an $l$-torsion point in their Jacobian. Generalising previous work for $l\le 2$, we also describe the sublocus of noncanonical singularities for any positive integer $l$. For $g\ge 4$ and $l=3,4, 6$, this allows us to provide a lifting result on pluricanonical forms playing an essential role in the computation of the Kodaira dimension of $R_{g,l}$: for those values of $l$, every pluricanonical form on the smooth locus of the moduli space extends to a desingularisation of the compactified moduli space.
We establish a structure result for the universal abelian variety over the moduli space A_5, in terms of discriminant curves of conic bundles over a del Pezzo surface. In particular, this gives a very simple unirational parametrization of the boundary divisor of the moduli space A_6 of principally polarized abelian varieties of dimension 6. Using this we derive a lower bound on the slope of all effective divisors on A_6.
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 Minimal Resolution Conjecture (MRC) for points on a projective variety X predicts that the Betti numbers of general sets of points in X are as small as the geometry (Hilbert function) of X allows. To a large extent, we settle this conjecture for a curve C with general moduli. We show that, independently of the genus, MRC holds for a general linear system of degree d and dimension r on C if and only if d>2r-1. We then proceed to find a full solution to the Ideal Generation Conjecture for curves with general moduli. In a different direction, we prove that K3 surfaces admit Ulrich bundles of every rank. We apply this to describe a pfaffian equation for the Chow form of a K3 surface.
We prove two results. First, we establish that the normal bundle of any smooth curve of genus 7 having maximal Clifford index is stable. Note that 7 is the smallest genus for which such a result could possibly hold. We then show that rank four Lazarsfeld-Mukai vector bundles on a curve that lies on a general K3 surface are stable. Both results have consequences for Mercat's conjecture on higher rank vector bundles on generic curves.
We formulate, and in some cases prove, three statements concerning the purity or, more generally the naturality of the resolution of various rings one can attach to a generic curve of genus g and a torsion point of order l in its Jacobian. These statements can be viewed an analogues of Green's Conjecture and we verify them computationally for bounded genus. We then compute the cohomology class of the corresponding non-vanishing locus in the moduli space R_{g,l} of twisted level l curves of genus g and use this to derive results about the birational geometry of R_{g, l}. For instance, we prove that R_{g,3} is a variety of general type when g>11 and the Kodaira dimension of R_{11,3} is greater than or equal to 19. In the last section we explain probabilistically the unexpected failure of the Prym-Green conjecture in genus 8 and level 2.
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.