Brill-Noether problem on splice quotient singularities and duality of topological Poincar\'e series

Abstract

In this manuscript we investigate the analouge of the Brill-Noether problem for smooth curves in the case of normal surface singularities. We determine the maximal possible value of $h^1$ of line bundles without fixed components in the Picard group $\pic^{l'}(\tX)$ in the following cases: for some special Chern classes $l'$ if $\tX$ is a resolution of a splice quotient singularity $(X, 0)$ and for arbitrary Chern classes in the case of weighted homogenous singularities. Motivated by this problem, we define the \emph{virtual cohomology numbers} $h^1_{virt}(l')$ for all Chern classes $l'$ such that $h^1_{virt}(0)$ is the canonical normalized Seiberg-Witten invariant and we generalize the duality formulae of Seiberg-Witten invariants obtained by the authors and A. N\'emethi in \cite{LNNdual}, for the virtual cohomology numbers.