Moduli stacks of vector bundles on curves and the King-Schofield rationality proof

Rationality and Poincare families for vector bundles with extra structure on a curve

Iterated Grassmannian bundles over moduli stacks of vector bundles on a curve are shown to be birational to an affine space times a moduli stack of degree 0 vector bundles, following the method of King and Schofield. Applications include the birational type of some Brill-Noether loci, of moduli schemes for vector bundles with parabolic structure or with level structure and for A. Schmitt's decorated vector bundles. A further consequence concerns the existence of Poincare families on finite coverings of the moduli schemes.