The Clifford defect of a numerical semigroup

Abstract

The Clifford defect is a rational number associated to the Weierstrass semigroup at a given point of an algebraic curve. It describes the error-correcting capability of the so-called Modified Algorithm for decoding the corresponding one-point codes defined at the point. This defect also finds applications in other contexts involving one-point codes. We study the Clifford defect of some numerical semigroups arising from curves and give explicit formulas for them.