Bezout's theorem gives us the degree of intersection of two properly intersecting projective varieties. As two curves in P^3 never intersect properly, Bezout's theorem cannot be directly used to bound the number of intersection points of such curves. In this work, we bound the maximum number of intersection points of two integral ACM curves in P^3. The bound that we give is in many cases optimal as a function of only the degrees and the initial degrees of the curves.

Using the possibility of computationally determining points on a finite cover of a unirational variety over a finite field, we determine all possibilities for direct Gorenstein linkages between general sets of points in P3 over an algebraically closed field of characteristic 0. As a consequence, we show that a general set of d points is glicci (that is, in the Gorenstein linkage class of a complete intersection) if d ≤33 or d = 37, 38. Computer algebra plays an essential role in the proof. The case of 20 points had been an outstanding problem in the area for a dozen years [8]. For Rob Lazarsfeld on the occasion of his 60th birthday

We study the lowest dimensional open case of the question whether every arithmetically Cohen--Macaulay subscheme of $\mathbb{P}^N$ is glicci, that is, whether every zero-scheme in $\mathbb{P}^3$ is glicci. We show that a set of $n \geq 56$ points in general position in $\PP^3$ admits no strictly descending Gorenstein liaison or biliaison. In order to prove this theorem, we establish a number of important results about arithmetically Gorenstein zero-schemes in $\mathbb{P}^3$.