On Zariski's theorem in positive characteristic

Abstract

In the current paper we show that the dimension of a family $V$ of irreducible reduced curves in a given ample linear system on a toric surface $S$ over an algebraically closed field is bounded from above by $-K_S.C+p_g(C)-1$, where $C$ denotes a general curve in the family. This result generalizes a famous theorem of Zariski to the case of positive characteristic. We also explore new phenomena that occur in positive characteristic: We show that the equality $\dim (V)=-K_S.C+p_g(C)-1$ does not imply the nodality of $C$ even if $C$ belongs to the smooth locus of $S$, and construct reducible Severi varieties on weighted projective planes in positive characteristic, parameterizing irreducible reduced curves of given geometric genus in a given ample linear system.

19 pages. Several typos have been fixed, and a couple of examples and pictures have been added. To appear in JEMS

References in corpus (1)

• Tropical geometry and correspondence theorems via toric stacks

Cited by in corpus (1)

• On the Göttsche Threshold