Brill-Noether theory on the projective plane for bundles with many sections

The Brill-Noether theory of curves plays a fundamental role in the theory of curves and their moduli and has been intensively studied since the 19th century. In contrast, Brill-Noether theory for higher dimensional varieties is less understood. It is hard to determine when Brill-Noether loci are nonempty and these loci can be reducible and of larger than the expected dimension. Let $E$ be a semistable sheaf on the projective plane. In this paper, we give an upper bound for $h^0(E)$ in terms of the rank $r$ and the slope $\mu$ of $E$. We show that the bound is achieved precisely when $E$ is a twist of a Steiner bundle. We classify the sheaves $E$ such that $h^0(E)$ is sufficiently close to the upper bound. We determine the nonemptiness, irreducibility and dimension of the Brill-Noether loci in the moduli spaces of sheaves with $h^0(E)$ in this range. When they are nonempty, these Brill-Noether loci are irreducible though almost always of larger than the expected dimension.