Okounkov bodies of finitely generated divisors

We show that the Okounkov body of a big divisor with finitely generated section ring is a rational simplex, for an appropriate choice of flag; furthermore, when the ambient variety is a surface, the same holds for every big divisor. Under somewhat more restrictive hypotheses, we also show that the corresponding semigroup is finitely generated.Comment: 9 pages; v2 includes a stronger result in the surface cas

Volume functions of linear series

The volume of a Cartier divisor is an asymptotic invariant, which measures the rate of growth of sections of powers of the divisor. It extends to a continuous, homogeneous, and log-concave function on the whole N\'eron--Severi space, thus giving rise to a basic invariant of the underlying projective variety. Analogously, one can also define the volume function of a possibly non-complete multigraded linear series. In this paper we will address the question of characterizing the class of functions arising on the one hand as volume functions of multigraded linear series and on the other hand as volume functions of projective varieties. In the multigraded setting, relying on the work of Lazarsfeld and Musta\c{t}\u{a} (2009) on Okounkov bodies, we show that any continuous, homogeneous, and log-concave function appears as the volume function of a multigraded linear series. By contrast we show that there exists countably many functions which arise as the volume functions of projective varieties. We end the paper with an example, where the volume function of a projective variety is given by a transcendental formula, emphasizing the complicated nature of the volume in the classical case.Comment: 16 pages, minor revisio

Regularity of smooth curves in biprojective spaces

Maclagan and Smith \cite{MaclaganSmith} developed a multigraded version of Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity. Based on their definition we will prove in this paper that for a smooth curve $C\subseteq \P^a\times\P^b$ $(a, b\geq 2)$ of bidegree $(d_1,d_2)$ with nondegenerate birational projections the ideal sheaf $\mathcal{I}_{C|\P^a\times\P^b}$ is $(d_2-b+1,d_1-a+1)$-regular. We also give an example showing that in some cases this bound is the best possible.Comment: 11 page