Non-smoothable curve singularities

Abstract: For curves singularities the dimension of smoothing components in the deformation space is an invariant of the singularity, but in general the deformation space has components of different dimensions. We are interested in the question what the generic singularities are above these components. To this end we revisit the known examples of non-smoothable singularities and study their deformations. There are two general methods available to show that a curve is not smoothable. In the first method one exhibits a family of singularities of a certain type and then uses a dimension count to prove that the family cannot lie in the closure of the space of smooth curves. The other method is specific for curves and uses the semicontinuity of a certain invariant, related to the Dedekind different. This invariant vanishes for Gorenstein, so in particular for smooth curves. With these methods and computations with computer algebra systems we study monomial curves and cones over point sets in projective space. We also give new explicit examples of non-smoothable singularities. In particular, we find non-smoothable Gorenstein curve singularities. The cone over a general self-associated point set is not smoothable, as the point set cannot be a hyperplane section of a canonical curve, if the genus is at least 11.