Interpolation and vector bundles on curves

Abstract: We define several notions of interpolation for vector bundles on curves and discuss their relation to slope stability. The heart of the paper demonstrates how to use degeneration arguments to prove interpolation. We use these ideas to show that a general connected space curve of degree $d$ and genus $g$ satisfies interpolation for $d \geq g+3$ unless $d = 5$ and $g = 2$. As a second application, we show that a general elliptic curve of degree $d$ in $\mathbb{P}^n$ satisfies weak interpolation when $d \geq 7$, $d \geq n+1$, and the remainder of $2d$ modulo $n-1$ lies between $3$ and $n-2$ inclusive. Finally, we prove that interpolation is equivalent to the---a priori stricter---notion of strong interpolation. This is useful if we are interested in incidence conditions given by higher dimensional linear spaces.