Brill-Noether loci for divisors on irregular varieties

Abstract

For a projective variety X, a line bundle L on X and r a natural number we consider the r-th Brill-Noether locus W^r(L,X):={η\in Pic^0(X)|h^0(L+η)\geq r+1}: we describe its natural scheme structure and compute the Zariski tangent space. If X is a smooth surface of maximal Albanese dimension and C is a curve on X, we define a Brill-Noether number ρ(C, r) and we prove, under some mild additional assumptions, that if ρ(C, r) is non negative then W^r(C,X) is nonempty of dimension bigger or equal to ρ(C,r). As an application, we derive lower bounds for h^0(K_D) for a divisor D that moves linearly on a smooth projective variety X of maximal Albanese dimension and inequalities for the numerical invariants of curves that do not move linearly on a surface of maximal Albanese dimension.

Final version, to appear in Journal of the European Mathematical Society