Invariants of the Brill-Noether curve

Abstract

For a projective nonsingular curve of genus $g$, the Brill-Noether locus $W_d^r(C)$ parametrizes line bundles of degree $d$ over $C$ with at least $r+1$ sections. When the curve is generic and the Brill-Noether number $\rho (g,r,d)$ equals $1$, one can then talk of the \emph{Brill-Noether curve}. In this paper, we explore the first two invariants of this curve, giving a new way of calculating the genus of this curve and computing its gonality when $C$ has genus 5.