Remarks on the minimal genus of curves linearly moving on a surface

Abstract

Given a smooth, irreducible, projective surface $S$, let $g(S)$ be the minimum geometric genus of an irreducible curve that moves in a linear system of positive dimension on $S$. We determine the value of this birational invariant for a general surface of degree $d$ in $\mathbb P^3$ and give a bound for $g(S)$ if $S$ is a general polarised K3 or abelian surface. As soon as this note appeared on the math arxiv, David Stapleton kindly pointed out to the author a paper by Ein and Lazarsfeld, in which in turn a paper by Konno was cited. Unfortunately the author was not aware of these two papers which contain results that strictly include the ones of this note. The author is very grateful to David Stapleton.