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Small schemes and varieties of minimal degree
- American Journal of Mathematics
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 128, Number 6, December 2006
- pp. 1363-1389
- 10.1353/ajm.2006.0043
- Article
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We prove that if X ⊂ Pr is any 2-regular scheme (in the sense of Castelnuovo-Mumford) then X is small. This means that if L is a linear space and Y := L ∩ X is finite, then Y is linearly independent in the sense that the dimension of the linear span of Y is deg Y + 1. The converse is true and well-known for finite schemes, but false in general. The main result of this paper is that the converse, "small implies 2-regular", is also true for reduced schemes (algebraic sets). This is proven by means of a delicate geometric analysis, leading to a complete classification: we show that the components of a small algebraic set are varieties of minimal degree, meeting in a particularly simple way. From the classification one can show that if X ⊂ Pr is 2-regular, then so is Xred, and so also is the projection of X from any point of X. Our results extend the Del Pezzo-Bertini classification of varieties of minimal degree, the characterization of these as the varieties of regularity 2 by Eisenbud-Goto, and the construction of 2-regular square-free monomial ideals by Fröberg.