We introduce a stratification on the space of symplectic flags on the de Rham bundle of the universal principally polarized abelian variety in positive characteristic and study its geometric properties like irreducibility of the strata and we calculate the cycle classes. When the characteristic $p$ is treated as a formal variable these classes can be seen as a deformation of the classes of the Schubert varieties for the corresponding classical flag variety (the classical case is recovered by putting $p$ equal to 0). We relate our stratification with the E-O stratification on the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties of a fixed dimension and derive properties of the latter. Our results are strongly linked with the combinatorics of the Weyl group of the symplectic group.
We study the relationship between two stratifications on parameter spaces for coherent sheaves and for quiver representations: a stratification by Harder-Narasimhan types and a stratification arising from the geometric invariant theory construction of the associated moduli spaces of semistable objects. For quiver representations, both stratifications coincide, but this is not quite true for sheaves. We explain why the stratifications on various Quot schemes do not coincide and see that the correct parameter space to compare such stratifications is the stack of coherent sheaves. Then we relate …
We give a partial "quasi-stratification" of the secant varieties of the order $d$ Veronese variety $X_{m,d}$ of $\mathbb {P}^m$. It covers the set $σ_t(X_{m,d})^{\dagger}$ of all points lying on the linear span of curvilinear subschemes of $X_{m,d}$, but two "quasi-strata" may overlap. For low border rank two different "quasi-strata" are disjoint and we compute the symmetric rank of their elements. Our tool is the Hilbert schemes of curvilinear subschemes of Veronese varieties. To get a stratification we attach to each $P\in σ_t(X_{m,d})^{\dagger}$ the minimal label of a quasi-stratum containi…
In this paper we study the geometry of good reductions of Shimura varieties of abelian type. More precisely, we construct the Newton stratification, Ekedahl-Oort stratification, and central leaves on the special fiber of a Shimura variety of abelian type at a good prime. We establish several basic properties of these stratifications, including the non-emptiness, closure relation and dimension formula, generalizing those previously known in the PEL and Hodge type cases. We also study the relations between these stratifications, both in general and in some special cases, such as those of fully H…
The moduli space of Higgs bundles has two stratifications. The Bialynicki-Birula stratification comes from the action of the non-zero complex numbers by multiplication on the Higgs field, and the Shatz stratification arises from the Harder-Narasimhan type of the vector bundle underlying a Higgs bundle. While these two stratification coincide in the case of rank two Higgs bundles, this is not the case in higher rank. In this paper we analyze the relation between the two stratifications for the moduli space of rank three Higgs bundles.
For every set of parabolic weights, we construct a Harder-Narasimhan stratification for the moduli stack of parabolic vector bundles on a curve. It is based on the notion of parabolic slope, introduced by Mehta and Seshadri. We also prove that the stratification is schematic, that each stratum is complete, and establish an analogue of Behrend's conjecture for parabolic vector bundles. A comparison with recent $Θ$-stratification approaches is discussed.
In this paper we study the slope stratification on the good reduction of the type C family Shimura varieties. We show that there is an open dense subset $U$ of the moduli space such that any point in $U$ can be deformed to a point with a given lower {\it admissible} Newton polygon. For the Siegel moduli spaces, this is obtained by F. Oort which plays an important role in his proof of the strong Grothendieck conjecture concerning the slope stratification. We also investigate the $p$-divisible groups and their isogeny classes arising from the abelian varieties in question.
Level $m$-stratifications on PEL Shimura varieties are defined and studied by Wedhorn using BT-$m$s with PEL structure, and then by Vasiu for general Hodge type Shimura varieties using Shimura $F$-crystals. The theory of foliations is established by Oort for Siegel modular varieties, and by Mantovan for PEL Shimura varieties. It plays an important role in Hamacher's work to compute the dimension of Newton strata of PEL Shimura varieties. We study level $m$ stratifications on good reductions at $p>2$ of Shimura varieties of Hodge type by constructing certain torsors together with equivariant mo…
We review the results on the cycle classes of the strata defined by the height and the Artin invariant on the moduli of K3 surfaces in positive characteristic obtained in joint work with Katsura and Ekedahl. In addition we prove a new irreducibility result for these strata.
Refinements of the Yang-Mills stratifications of spaces of connections over a compact Riemann surface are investigated. The motivation for this study was the search for a complete set of relations between the standard generators for the cohomology of the moduli spaces of stable holomorphic bundles of rank n and degree d when n and d are coprime and n>2.
Our concern in this paper is to describe the p-rank statification on the Siegel moduli space with Iwahori level structure over fields of positive characteristic. We calculate the dimension of the strata and describe the closure of a given stratum in terms of p-rank strata. We also examine the relationship between the p-rank stratification and the Kottwitz-Rapoport stratification.
Let $X$ be a smooth projective curve of genus $g(X)\geq 1$ over an algebraically closed field $k$ of characteristic $p>0$, $\M^s_X(r,d)$ the moduli space of stable vector bundles of rank $r$ and degree $d$ on $X$. We study the Frobenius stratification of $\M^s_X(r,d)$ in terms of Harder-Narasimhan polygons of Frobenius pull backs of stable vector bundles and obtain the irreducibility and dimension of each non-empty Frobenius stratum in case $(p,g,r)=(3,2,3)$.
A symplectic or orthogonal bundle $V$ of rank $2n$ over a curve has an invariant $t(V)$ which measures the maximal degree of its isotropic subbundles of rank $n$. This invariant $t$ defines stratifications on moduli spaces of symplectic and orthogonal bundles. We study this stratification by relating it to another one given by secant varieties in certain extension spaces. We give a sharp upper bound on $t(V)$, which generalizes the classical Nagata bound for ruled surfaces and the Hirschowitz bound for vector bundles, and study the structure of the stratifications on the moduli spaces. In part…
Let $X$ be a smooth irreducible projective curve of genus $g$ and gonality 4. We show that the canonical model of $X$ is contained in a uniquely defined surface, ruled by conics, whose geometry is deeply related to that of $X$. This surface allows us to define four invariants of $X$ and hence to stratify the moduli space of four-gonal curves by means of closed irreducible subvarieties whose dimensions we compute.
Let $X$ be a smooth projective curve of genus $g\geq 2$ over an algebraically closed field $k$ of characteristic $p>0$, $F_X:X\rightarrow X$ the absolute Frobenius morphism. Let $\M^s_X(r,d)$ be the moduli space of stable vector bundles of rank $r$ and degree $d$ on $X$. We study the Frobenius stratification of $\M^s_X(3,0)$ in terms of Harder-Narasimhan polygons of Frobenius pull backs of stable vector bundles and obtain the irreducibility and dimension of each non-empty Frobenius stratum in the case $(p,g)=(3,2)$.
We propose a new stratification of the reduced subschemes of Rapoport-Zink spaces and of affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties that highlights the relation between the geometry of these spaces and the action of the associated automorphism group. We show that this provides a joint group-theoretic interpretation of well-known stratifications which only exist for special cases such as the Bruhat-Tits stratification of Vollaard and Wedhorn, the semi-module stratification of de Jong and Oort, and the locus where the a-invariant is equal to 1.
We formulate a theory of instability and Harder-Narasimhan filtrations for an arbitrary moduli problem in algebraic geometry. We introduce the notion of a $Θ$-stratification of a moduli problem, which generalizes the Kempf-Ness stratification in GIT as well as the Harder-Narasimhan stratification of the moduli of coherent sheaves on a projective scheme. Our main theorems establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of these stratifications. We define a structure on an algebraic stack called a numerical invariant, and we show that in many situations a numerical invariant defi…
Affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties are analogues of Deligne-Lusztig varieties in the context of affine flag varieties and affine Grassmannians. They are closely related to moduli spaces of $p$-divisible groups in positive characteristic, and thus to arithmetic properties of Shimura varieties. We compare stratifications of affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties attached to a basic element $b$. In particular, we show that the stratification defined by Chen and Viehmann using the relative position to elements of the group $J_b$, the $σ$-centralizer of $b$, coincides with the Bruhat-Tits stratification in…
This short paper is a continuation of the author's Ph.D thesis, where Ekedahl-Oort strata are defined and studied for Shimura varieties of Hodge type. The main results here are as follows. 1. The Ekedahl-Oort stratification is independent of the choices of symplectic embeddings. 2. Under certain reasonable assumptions, there is certain functoriality for Ekedahl-Oort stratifications with respect to morphisms of Shimura varieties.
We consider the problem of finding the limit at infinity (corresponding to the downward Morse flow) of a Higgs bundle in the nilpotent cone under the natural $\mathbb{C}^*$-action on the moduli space. For general rank we provide an answer for Higgs bundles with regular nilpotent Higgs field, while in rank three we give the complete answer. Our results show that the limit can be described in terms of data defined by the Higgs field, via a filtration of the underlying vector bundle.
We define the affine stratification number asn X of a scheme X. For X equidimensional, it is the minimal number k such that there is a stratification of X by locally closed affine subschemes of codimension at most k. We show that the affine stratification number is well-behaved, and bounds many aspects of the topological complexity of the scheme, such as vanishing of cohomology groups of quasicoherent, constructible, and l-adic sheaves. We explain how to bound asn X in practice. We give a series of conjectures (the first by E. Looijenga) bounding the affine stratification number of various mod…
In this paper we give a characterization of the height of K3 surfaces in positive characteristic. This enables us to calculate the cycle classes of the loci in families of K3 surfaces where the height is at least h. The formulas for such loci can be seen as generalizations of the famous formula of Deuring for the number of supersingular elliptic curves in positive characteristic. In order to describe the tangent spaces to these loci we study the first cohomology of higher closed forms.
Let $F$ be a totally real field in which $p$ is unramified. We study the Goren-Oort stratification of the special fibers of quaternionic Shimura varieties over a place above $p$. We show that each stratum is a $(\mathbb{P}^1)^N$-bundle over other quaternionic Shimura varieties (for some appropriate $N$).
The aim of this paper is to generalize the $m-$Segre invariant for vector bundles to coherent systems. Let $X$ be a non-singular irreducible complex projective curve of genus $g$ over $\mathbb{C}$ and $(E,V)$ be a coherent system on $X$ of type $(n,d,k)$. For any pair of integers $m, t$, $0 < m < n$, $0 \leq t \leq k$ we define the $(m,t)-$Segre invariant, denoted by $S^α_{m,t}$ and show that $S^α_{m,t}$ induces a semicontinuous function on the families of coherent systems. Thus, $S^α_{m,t}$ gives a stratification of the moduli space $G(α;n,d,k)$ of $α-$stable coherent systems of type $(n,d,k)…
We determine an upper bound for the cohomological dimension of the complement of a closed subset in a projective variety which possesses an appropriate stratification. We apply the result to several particular cases, including the Bialynicki-Birula stratification; in this latter case, the bound is optimal.
Given a compact Riemann surface $X$ with an action of a finite group $G$, the group algebra Q[G] provides an isogenous decomposition of its Jacobian variety $JX$, known as the group algebra decomposition of $JX$. We consider the set of equisymmetric Riemann surfaces $\mathcal{M}(2n-1, D_{2n}, θ)$ for all $n\geq 2$. We study the group algebra decomposition of the Jacobian $JX$ of every curve $X\in \mathcal{M}(2n-1, D_{2n},θ)$ for all admissible actions, and we provide affine models for them. We use the topological equivalence of actions on the curves to obtain facts regarding its Jacobians. We …
In the paper four stratifications in the reduction modulo $p$ of a general Shimura variety are studied: the Newton stratification, the Kottwitz-Rapoport stratification, the Ekedahl-Oort stratification and the Ekedahl-Kottwitz-Oort-Rapoport stratification. We formulate a system of axioms and show that these imply non-emptiness statements and closure relation statements concerning these various stratifications. These axioms are satisfied in the Siegel case.
The moduli space of Higgs bundles can be constructed as a quotient of an infinite-dimensional space and hence admits an orbit type decomposition. In this paper, we show that the orbit type decomposition is a complex Whitney stratification such that each stratum is a complex symplectic submanifold and hence admits a complex Poisson bracket. Moreover, these Poisson brackets glue to a Poisson bracket on the structure sheaf of the moduli space so that the moduli space is a stratified complex symplectic space
We construct the fine moduli space of log abelian varieties with PEL structure, which gives a toroidal compactification of the moduli space of abelian varieties with PEL structure.
The theory of $Θ$-stratifications generalizes a classical stratification of the moduli of vector bundles on a smooth curve, the Harder-Narasimhan-Shatz stratification, to any moduli problem that can be represented by an algebraic stack. Using derived algebraic geometry, we develop a structure theory, which is a refinement of the theory of local cohomology, for the derived category of quasi-coherent complexes on an algebraic stack equipped with a $Θ$-stratification. We then apply this to the $D$-equivalence conjecture, which predicts that birationally equivalent Calabi-Yau manifolds have equiva…
We study a compactification of the moduli space of theta characteristics, giving a modular interpretation of the geometric points and describing the boundary stratification. This space is different from the moduli space of spin curves. The modular description and the boundary stratification of the new compactification are encoded by a tropical moduli space. We show that this tropical moduli space is a refinement of the moduli space of spin tropical curves. We describe explicitly the induced decomposition of its cones.
In this paper we consider the stratification on the moduli space of principally polarized abelian surfaces in characteristic $p>0$ defined by the height of the formal group associated to $H^2(X,O_X)$. We compute the cycle classes of the strata and compare these with those of the $p$-rank stratification.
We establish that the geometric action of the absolute Galois group on the étale fundamental group of moduli spaces of curves induces a Galois action on its stack inertia subgroups, and that this action is given by cyclotomy conjugacy. This result extends the special case of inertia without étale factorisation previously established by the authors. It is here obtained in the general case by comparing deformations of Galois actions. Since the stack inertia corresponds to the first level of the stack stratification of the space, this results, by analogy with the arithmetic of the Deligne-Mumford…
We develop a moduli theory of algebraic varieties and pairs of non-negative Kodaira dimension. We define stable minimal models and construct their projective coarse moduli spaces under certain natural conditions. This can be applied to a wide range of moduli problems in algebraic geometry.
Let $ S $ be the special fibre of the good reduction of a Shimura variety of Hodge type. By constructing adapted deformations for the associated $p$-divisible groups of $ S $, we manage to construct a morphism from $S$ to some quotient sheaf of the loop group associated with $S$. We show that the geometric fibres of this morphism give back the Ekedahl-Oort strata of $S$. For any geometric point $ x $ of $ S $, we give a deformation over $ W(k(x)) $ of the $ p $-divisible group associated with $ x $ by (non-canonically) constructing a Breuil-Kisin window (which corresponds to a $ p $-divisible …
We investigate Siegel modular varieties in positive characteristic with Iwahori level structure. On these spaces, we have the Newton stratification, and the Kottwitz-Rapoport stratification; one would like to understand how these stratifications are related to each other. We give a simple description of all KR strata which are entirely contained in the supersingular locus as disjoint unions of Deligne-Lusztig varieties. We also give an explicit numerical description of the KR stratification in terms of abelian varieties.
These are expanded notes on a lecture of the same title at the 2015 AMS summer institute in algebraic geometry. We give an introduction and overview of the "beyond geometric invariant theory" program for analyzing moduli problems in algebraic geometry. We discuss methods for analyzing stability in general moduli problems, focusing on the moduli of coherent sheaves on a smooth projective scheme as a toy example. We describe several applications: a general structure theorem for the derived category of coherent sheaves on an algebraic stack; some results on the topology of moduli stacks; and a "v…
This is an expository article on the recent developments of Hodge theory on moduli spaces of smooth projective varieties with semi-ample canonical line bundles.
I construct a generalisation of Mantovan's almost product structure to Shimura varieties of Hodge type with hyperspecial level structure at $p$ and deduce that the perfection of the Newton strata are pro-étale locally isomorphic to the perfection of the product of a central leaf and a Rapoport-Zink space. The almost product formula can be extended to obtain an analogue of Caraiani's and Scholze's generalisation of the almost product structure for Shimura varieties of Hodge type.
In this note it is shown that associating to a principally polarized abelian variety its de Rham cohomology defines a faithfully flat morphism of the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties in positive characteristics to the moduli space of symplectic $F$-Zips as defined in \cite{MW}.
We give a short appreciation of Mumford's work on the moduli of varieties by putting it into historical context. By reviewing earlier works we highlight the innovations introduced by Mumford. Then we discuss recent developments whose origins can be traced back to Mumford's ideas.
We describe the moduli stack of Gushel-Mukai varieties as a global quotient stack and its coarse moduli space as the corresponding GIT quotient. The construction is based on a comprehensive study of the relation between this stack and the stack of Lagrangian data; roughly speaking, we show that the former is a generalized root stack of the latter. As an application, we define the period map for Gushel-Mukai varieties and construct some complete nonisotrivial families of smooth Gushel-Mukai varieties. In an appendix, we describe a generalization of the root stack construction used in our approa…
We study the moduli space of abelian threefolds with Iwahori level structure in positive characteristic. We explicitly determine the fibers of the canonical projection to the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties and draw conclusions about the relationship between the Ekedahl-Oort, the Kottwitz-Rapoport and the Newton stratification on these spaces.
The moduli space $\cM_g$ of nonsingular projective curves of genus $g$ is compactified into the moduli $\bcM_g$ of Deligne-Mumford stable curves of genus $g$. We compactify in a similar way the moduli space of abelian varieties by adding some mildly degenerating limits of abelian varieties. A typical case is the moduli space of Hesse cubics. Any Hesse cubic is GIT-stable in the sense that its $\SL(3)$-orbit is closed in the semistable locus, and conversely any GIT-stable planar cubic is one of Hesse cubics. Similarly in arbitrary dimension, the moduli space of abelian varieties is compactified…
In this paper we give a lower bound for the codimension of the Andreotti-Mayer loci in the moduli space of principally polarized complex abelian varieties. We also present a conjecture on this codimension.
