On surfaces of maximal sectional regularity

TL;DR

This paper classifies projective surfaces of maximal sectional regularity in high-dimensional projective space, revealing their geometric structures, regularity properties, and secant line configurations.

Contribution

It provides a classification of such surfaces, showing they are either divisors on a rational scroll or projections of smooth rational surfaces, and establishes their regularity and secant line geometry.

Findings

Surfaces are either divisors on a rational 3-fold scroll or projections of rational scrolls.

The Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity equals d-r+3 for these surfaces.

The geometry of extremal secant lines is characterized and studied.

Abstract

We study projective surfaces $X \subset \mathbb{P}^r$ (with $r \geq 5$) of maximal sectional regularity and degree $d > r$, hence surfaces for which the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity $\reg(\mathcal{C})$ of a general hyperplane section curve $\mathcal{C} = X \cap \mathbb{P}^{r-1}$ takes the maximally possible value $d-r+3$. We use the classification of varieties of maximal sectional regularity of \cite{BLPS1} to see that these surfaces are either particular divisors on a smooth rational $3$-fold scroll $S(1,1,1)\subset \mathbb{P}^5$, or else admit a plane $\mathbb{F} = \mathbb{P}^2 \subset \mathbb{P}^r$ such that $X \cap \mathbb{F} \subset \mathbb{F}$ is a pure curve of degree $d-r+3$. We show that our surfaces are either cones over curves of maximal regularity, or almost non-singular projections of smooth rational surface scrolls. We use this to show that the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of such a surface $X$ satisfies the equality $\reg(X) = d-r+3$ and we compute or estimate various of the cohomological invariants as well as the Betti numbers of such surfaces. We also study the geometry of extremal secant lines of our surfaces $X$, more precisely the closure $\Sigma(X)$ of the set of all proper extremal secant lines to $X$ in the Grassmannian $\mathbb{G}(1, \mathbb{P}^r).$