Towards Brill-Noether Theory for Spectral Curves

Abstract: We investigate Brill-Noether loci of two kinds of spectral curves: double covers whose branch locus is a canonical divisor and spectral covers of the projective line. Our techniques are based on the Hitchin correspondence and Higgs bundles. For the first kind our results determine the gonality sequence, when the rank of the linear system is much smaller than the genus. For this the curve and the branch divisor are assumed to be general. In the second case we compute dimensions of the finer splitting loci if these spaces are non-empty. We compare this result with the existing literature about general curves with a fixed gonality.