Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-cx56b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-06T20:16:33.418Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On the Bicanonical Sets of a Certain Class of Curves

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Ronald Frith
Affiliation:
Trinity College

Extract

W. G. Welchman in his work on fundamental scrolls* obtains as directrix curves to such scrolls a canonical curve pK2p−2 in [p − 1] and a non-special curve pCn in [np]. These latter curves may not, however, be general curves regarded projectively, and it is an interesting question to find out the geometrical interpretation of their particularity. The curves C and K are, of course, in birational correspondence, and the prime sections of C correspond to the sections of K by quadrics through a contact set*, i.e. a set of points such that there is a quadric which touches K at every point of the set. For k small enough it is clear that every set of k points is a contact set and in this case the curves C are quite general. For larger k the fact that the set is a contact set simply means that, on C, the points of the bicanonical sets residual to a prime section lie themselves in primes (when k is sufficiently small the number of points in this residual set is such that they always lie in a prime).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Philosophical Society 1935

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* Welchman, W. G., “Special scrolls and involutions on canonical curves”, Proc. London Math. Soc. (in the press).Google Scholar

* W. G. Welchman, loc. cit.

* There are in this case no points corresponding to the points (1), …, (5) above.

* For p > 3 this is more than we should expect to meet in a point.