Canonical degree of a smooth plane curve Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For a smooth degree- projective plane curve , the adjunction formula gives . A hyperplane section has degree , so
Choose a projective embedding of the abelian surface . By Bertini's theorem, a general hyperplane section is a smooth projective curve that is connected. It is ample, so . Choose and translate the inclusion so it sends to the identity of . The universal property of the Jacobian variety then gives a homomorphism of abelian varieties
whose composition with the based Abel map of an algebraic curve is this translated inclusion.
The image is a closed connected algebraic subgroup, since is projective, and it contains a translate of . If the image had dimension one, that irreducible curve would be the image subgroup itself. A distinct coset is disjoint from it and has the same numerical divisor class: translation acts trivially on cohomology, being homotopic to the identity on the complex torus. Its self-intersection would therefore be zero, contradicting . The image has dimension two and is all of . Thus is surjective, as expressed by the principle that an ample curve on an abelian surface generates the surface.
Write as in part (d). Each very ample line bundle is the pullback of under a projective embedding. A hyperplane section therefore supplies an effective divisor on a complex manifold with . Hence
Every Picard group class is therefore in the image of the divisor-to-Picard map:
The intersection with a line is a hyperplane section:
The canonical bundle of a smooth projective hypersurface formula, obtained from the adjunction formula, gives for a smooth degree-four curve in
Thus , so the divisor class of is the canonical divisor class. Therefore is a canonical divisor. Its degree is also , consistently with .