On the minimum distance of algebraic geometry codes

Abstract

In the literature about algebraic geometry codes one finds a lot of results improving Goppa's minimum distance bound. These improvements often use the idea of "shrinking" or "growing" the defining divisors of the codes under certain technical conditions. The main contribution of this thesis is to show that most of these improvements can be obtained in a unified way from one theorem. Our results do not only simplify previous results but they also improve them further.