We investigate topological properties of the moduli space of spin structures over genus two curves. In particular, we provide a combinatorial description of this space and give a presentation of the (rational) cohomology ring via generators and relations.
We study birational geometry of the moduli space of stable sheaves on a quadric surface with Hilbert polynomial $5m + 1$ and $c_{1} = (2, 3)$. We describe a birational map between the moduli space and a projective bundle over a Grassmannian as a composition of smooth blow-ups/downs.
We prove that the moduli spaces of rational curves of degree at most $3$ in linear sections of the Grassmannian $Gr(2,5)$ are all rational varieties. We also study their compactifications and birational geometry.
We describe a close relation between wall crossings in the birational geometry of moduli space of Gieseker stable sheaves $M_H(v)$ on $\bb{P}^2$ and mini-wall crossings in the stability manifold $Stab(D^b(\bb{P}^2))$.
We compute the first, second, third, and fifth rational cohomology groups of the moduli space of stable n-pointed genus g curves, for all g and n, using (mostly) algebro-geometric techniques.
We investigate the birational geometry (in the sense of Mori's program) of the moduli space of rank 2 semistable parabolic vector bundles on a rational curve. We compute the effective cone of the moduli space and show that all birational models obtained by Mori's program are also moduli spaces of parabolic vector bundles with certain parabolic weights.
We study the geometry of the moduli stack of vector bundles of fixed rank and degree over an algebraic curve by introducing a filtration made of open substacks build from $(k, l)$-stable vector bundles. $(k, l)$-stability was introduced by Narasimhan and Ramanan to study the geometry of the coarse moduli space of stable bundles. We will exhibit the stacky picture and analyse the geometric and cohomological properties of the moduli stacks of $(k, l)$-stable vector bundles. For particular pairs $(k, l) $ of integers we also show that these moduli stacks admit coarse moduli spaces and we discuss …
We classify all Gieseker semi-stable sheaves on the complex projective plane that have dimension 1, multiplicity 6 and Euler characteristic 3. We show that their moduli space is birational to the blow-up at a special point of a certain moduli space of semi-stable Kronecker modules.
In this paper we construct a tropical moduli space parametrizing roots of divisors on tropical curves. We study the relation between this space and the skeleton of Jarvis moduli space of nets of limit roots on stable curves. We show that the combinatorics of the moduli space of tropical roots is governed by the poset of flows, a poset parametrizing certain flows on graphs.
We study the moduli space of stable sheaves of Euler characteristic 1 supported on curves of bidegree (3, 3) contained in a smooth quadric surface. We show that this moduli space is rational. We compute its Betti numbers by studying the variation of the moduli spaces of alpha-semi-stable pairs.
We study the moduli space of stable sheaves of Euler characteristic 2, supported on curves of arithmetic genus 2 contained in a smooth quadric surface. We show that this moduli space is rational. We compute its Betti numbers and we give a classification of the stable sheaves involving locally free resolutions.
This is the authors doctoral thesis written at the Humboldt-University Berlin. It contains material from the three separate papers: "On the Kodaira dimension of the moduli space of nodal curves", "On quotients of $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ by certain subgroups of $S_n$" and "The moduli space of hyperelliptic curves with marked points".
The main aim of this paper is to develop general algebraic and cohomological tools for the study of the local geometry of moduli and parameter spaces in Algebraic Geometry, culminating in the so-called Hitchin (or KZ) (projective) connection over the Moduli of curves and the proof of its flatness. Among other things, we notably give a 'modular' (i.e. in terms of the modular problem) construction of the differential operators- of any order- acting on (general)modular vector bundles, and in particular for the Lie algebra of vector fields on a (general) Moduli space, with its natural action on fu…
We show that certain structures and constructions of the Whitham theory, an essential part of the perturbation theory of soliton equations, can be instrumental in understanding the geometry of the moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces with marked points. We use the ideas of the Whitham theory to define local coordinates and construct foliations on the moduli spaces. We use these constructions to give a new proof of the Diaz' bound on the dimension of complete subvarieties of the moduli spaces. Geometrically, we study the properties of meromorphic differentials with real periods, and their degenera…
We consider the space $\mathcal R_{g,S_3}^{S_3}$ of curves with a connected $S_3$-cover, proving that for any odd genus $g\geq 13$ this moduli is of general type. Furthermore we develop a set of tools that are essential in approaching the case of $G$-covers for any finite group $G$.
We prove that the moduli space ${\Cal M}_{g,n}$ of smooth curves of genus $g$ with $n$ marked points is rational for $g=6$ and $1 \le n \le 8$, and it is unirational for $g=8$ and $1 \le n \le 11$, $g=10$ and $1 \le n \le 3$, $g=12$ and $n = 1$.
We study the geometry of a class of $n$-dimensional smooth projective varieties constructed by Schreieder for their noteworthy Hodge-theoretic properties. In particular, we realize Schreieder's surfaces as elliptic modular surfaces and Schreieder's threefolds as one-dimensional families of Picard rank $19$ $K3$ surfaces.
This is a survey written for the Proceedings of the AMS Summer Institute in Algebraic Geometry held in Seattle in 2005. Topics discussed in the survey include the ample and the effective cone of the moduli space of curves, Kodaira dimension, Slope Conjecture, log canonical models etc.
We prove that the Kodaira dimension of the moduli space M_{23} of curves of genus 23 is at least 2. We also present some evidence for the hypothesis that the Kodaira dimension of the moduli space is actually equal to 2. Note that for g > 23 the moduli space is of general type, while for g\leq 22, Harris and Morrison conjectured that M_g is uniruled. The result on M_{23} is obtained by investigating the relative position of three explicit multicanonical divisors which are of Brill-Noether type.
Using wall-crossing for K3 surfaces, we establish birational equivalence of moduli spaces of stable objects on generic Enriques surfaces for different stability conditions. As an application, we prove in the case of a Mukai vector of odd rank that they are birational to Hilbert schemes. The argument makes use of a new Chow-theoretic result, showing that moduli spaces on an Enriques surface give rise to constant cycle subvarieties of the moduli spaces of the covering K3.
Here we investigate some birational properties of two collections of moduli spaces, namely moduli spaces of (pointed) stable curves and of (pointed) spin curves. In particular, we focus on vanishings of Hodge numbers of type (p,0) and on computations of the Kodaira dimension. Our methods are purely algebraic geometric and rely on an induction argument on the number of marked points and the genus of the curves (cf. mathAG/9803001).
In order to study wall crossing formula of Donaldson type invariants on the blown-up plane, Nakajima-Yoshioka constructed a sequence of blow-up/blow-down diagrams connecting the moduli space of torsion free framed sheaves on projective plane, and that on its blow-up. In this paper, we prove that Nakajima-Yoshioka's diagram realizes the minimal model program. Furthermore, we obtain a fully-faithful embedding between the derived categories of these moduli spaces.
We develop a theory of Brill-Noether divisors on the moduli space of stable spin curves of genus g, and compute the classes of these loci. A spin Brill-Noether cycle is defined in terms of the relative position of the spin structure with respect to certain Raynaud theta-divisors in the Jacobian of the curve.
We decompose each moduli space of semistable sheaves on the complex projective plane with support of dimension one and degree four into locally closed subvarieties, each subvariety being the good or geometric quotient of a set of morphisms of locally free sheaves modulo a reductive or a nonreductive group. We find locally free resolutions of length one of all these sheaves and describe them.
We determine the smooth locus and the locus of canonical singularities in the Cornalba compactification \bar S_g of the moduli space S_g of spin curves, i.e., smooth curves of genus g with a theta characteristic. Moreover, the following lifting result for pluricanonical forms is proved: Every pluricanonical form on the smooth locus of \bar S_g extends holomorphically to a desingularisation of \bar S_g.
The moduli space of smooth real plane quartic curves consists of six connected components. We prove that each of these components admits a real hyperbolic structure. These connected components correspond to the six real forms of a certain hyperbolic lattice over the Gaussian integers. We will study this Gaussian lattice in detail. For the connected component that corresponds to maximal real quartic curves we obtain a more explicit description. We construct a Coxeter diagram that encodes the geometry of this component.
Mathematical instanton bundles of rank 4 and $c_2=2$ on ${\mathbb P}^4$ have a smoothquasiprojective moduli space, which is shown via a direct GIT construction. A complete classification of jumping lines of these vector bundles is obtained. The duals of these bundles are described. Dimension computations and irreducibility proofs for some "interesting" subsets of the moduli space are presented. Restrictions of vector bundles from ${\mathbb P}^4$ to ${\mathbb P}^3$ are shown to produce mathematical instanton bundles on ${\mathbb P}^3$.
We prove that the moduli space of polarized $K3$ surfaces of genus eleven with $n$ marked points is unirational when $n\leq 6$ and uniruled when $n\leq7$. As a consequence, we settle a long standing but not proved assertion about the unirationality of $\cal{M}_{11,n}$ for $n\leq6$. We also prove that the moduli space of polarized $K3$ surfaces of genus eleven with $9$ marked points has non-negative Kodaira dimension.
Moduli spaces of sheaves and Hilbert schemes of points have experienced a recent resurgence in interest in the past several years, due largely to new techniques arising from Bridgeland stability conditions and derived category methods. In particular, classical questions about the birational geometry of these spaces can be answered by using new tools such as the positivity lemma of Bayer and Macrì. In this article we first survey classical results on moduli spaces of sheaves and their birational geometry. We then discuss the relationship between these classical results and the new techniques co…
The goal of this paper is the study of simple rank 2 parabolic vector bundles over a $2$-punctured elliptic curve $C$. We show that the moduli space of these bundles is a non-separated gluing of two charts isomorphic to $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$. We also showcase a special curve $Γ$ isomorphic to $C$ embedded in this space, and this way we prove a Torelli theorem. This moduli space is related to the moduli space of semistable parabolic bundles over $\mathbb{P}^1$ via a modular map which turns out to be the 2:1 cover ramified in $Γ$. We recover the geometry of del Pezzo surfaces of deg…
In this paper we connect degenerations of Fano threefolds by projections. Using Mirror Symmetry we transfer these connections to the side of Landau--Ginzburg models. Based on that we suggest a generalization of Kawamata's categorical approach to birational geometry enhancing it via geometry of moduli spaces of Landau--Ginzburg models. We suggest a conjectural application to Hasset--Kuznetsov--Tschinkel program based on new nonrationality "invariants" we consider --- gaps and phantom categories. We make several conjectures for these invariants in the case of surfaces of general type and quadric…
The enumerative geometry of r-th roots of line bundles is the subject of Witten's conjecture and occurs in the calculation of Gromov-Witten invariants of orbifolds. It requires the definition of the suitable compact moduli stack and the generalization of the standard techniques from the theory of moduli of stable curves. In math.AG/0603687, we construct a compact stack by describing the notion of stability in the context of twisted curves. In this paper, by working with stable twisted curves, we extend Mumford's formula for the Chern character of the Hodge bundle to the direct image of the uni…
In this expository article we give a categorical definition of the integral cohomology ring of a stack. We show that for quotient stacks the categorical cohomology may be identified with equivariant cohomology. Via this identification we show that for Deligne-Mumford quotient stacks this cohomology is rationally isomorphic to the rational cohomology of the coarse moduli space. The theory is presented with a focus on the stacks of smooth and stable curves.
Hassett's moduli spaces of weighted stable curves form an important class of alternate modular compactifications of the moduli space of smooth curves with marked points. In this article we define a tropical analogue of these moduli spaces and show that the naive set-theoretic tropicalization map can be identified with a natural deformation retraction onto the non-Archimedean skeleton. This result generalizes work of Abramovich, Caporaso, and Payne treating the Deligne-Knudsen-Mumford compactification of the moduli space of smooth curves with marked points. We also study tropical analogues of t…
Recall that the moduli space of smooth (that is, stable) cubic curves is isomorphic to the quotient of the upper half plane by the group of fractional linear transformations with integer coefficients. We establish a similar result for stable cubic surfaces: the moduli space is biholomorphic to a quotient of the compex 4-ball by an explict arithmetic group generated by complex reflections. This identification gives interesting structural information on the moduli space and allows one to locate the points in complex hyperbolic 4-space corresponding to cubic surfaces with symmetry, e.g., the Ferm…
This paper has been withdrawn by the author due to a crucial error in the proofs. The error has been corrected and the paper has been expanded in arXiv:0910.5327
This is the second in a pair of papers developing a framework to apply logarithmic methods in the study of singular curves of genus $1$. This volume focuses on logarithmic Gromov--Witten theory and tropical geometry. We construct a logarithmically nonsingular moduli space of genus $1$ curves mapping to any toric variety. The space is a birational modification of the principal component of the Abramovich--Chen--Gross--Siebert space of logarithmic stable maps and produces an enumerative genus $1$ curve counting theory. We describe the non-archimedean analytic skeleton of this moduli space and, a…
We prove that Donaldson-Thomas type invariants are equal to weighted Euler characteristics of their moduli spaces. In particular, such invariants depend only on the scheme structure of the moduli space, not the symmetric obstruction theory used to define them. We also introduce new invariants generalizing Donaldson-Thomas type invariants to moduli problems with open moduli space. These are useful for computing Donaldson-Thomas type invariants over stratifications.
Let $\mathbf{M}_d$ be the moduli space of stable sheaves on $\mathbb{P}^2$ with Hilbert polynomial $dm+1$. In this paper, we determine the effective and the nef cone of the space $\mathbf{M}_d$ by natural geometric divisors. Main idea is to use the wall-crossing on the space of Bridgeland stability conditions and to compute the intersection numbers of divisors with curves by using the Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch theorem. We also present the stable base locus decomposition of the space $\mathbf{M}_6$. As a byproduct, we obtain the Betti numbers of the moduli spaces, which confirm the prediction i…
We introduce a new technique for proving positivity of certain divisor classes on $\bar{M}_{0,n}$ and its weighted variants. Our methods give an unconditional description of the spaces of symmetric weighted pointed rational curves as log canonical models of $\bar{M}_{0,n}$.
In this paper we study the geometry of GIT configurations of $n$ ordered points on $\mathbb{P}^1$ both from the the birational and the biregular viewpoint. In particular, we prove that any extremal ray of the Mori cone of effective curves of the quotient $(\mathbb{P}^1)^n//PGL(2)$, taken with the symmetric polarization, is generated by a one dimensional boundary stratum of the moduli space. Furthermore, we develop some technical machinery that we use to compute the canonical divisor and the Hilbert polynomial of $(\mathbb{P}^1)^n//PGL(2)$ in its natural embedding, and its group of automorphism…
In recent years a series of remarkable advances in tropical geometry and in non-archimedean geometry have brought new insights to the moduli theory of algebraic curves and their Jacobians. The goal of this survey, an expanded version of my talks at the 2015 AMS symposium in algebraic geometry and at AGNES 2016, is to present some of the results in this area.
Let M_g be the moduli space of smooth curves of genus g >= 3, and \bar{M}_g the Deligne-Mumford compactification in terms of stable curves. Let \bar{M}_g^{[1]} be an open set of \bar{M}_g consisting of stable curves of genus g with one node at most. In this paper, we determine the necessary and sufficient condition to guarantee that a Q-divisor D on \bar{M}_g is nef over \bar{M}_g^{[1]}, that is, (D . C) >= 0 for all irreducible curves C on \bar{M}_g with C \cap \bar{M}_g^{[1]} \not= \emptyset.
This is a survey article written for the Jahresberichte der DMV. Tropical geometry can be viewed as an efficient combinatorial tool to study degenerations in algebraic geometry. Abstract tropical curves are essentially metric graphs, and covers of tropical curves maps between metric graphs satisfying certain conditions. In this short survey, we offer an introduction to the combinatorial theory of abstract tropical curves and covers of curves, and their moduli spaces, and we showcase three results demonstrating how this theory can be applied in algebraic geometry.
In a recent paper Chiodo and Farkas described the singular locus and the locus of non-canonical singularities of the moduli space of level curves. In this work we generalize their results to the moduli space $\overline{\mathcal R}_{g,G}$ of curves with a $G$-cover for any finite group $G$. We show that non-canonical singularities are of two types: $T$-curves, that is singularities lifted from the moduli space $\overline{\mathcal M}_g$ of stable curves, and $J$-curves, that is new singularities entirely characterized by the dual graph of the cover. Finally, we prove that in the case $G=S_3$, th…
These notes will give an introduction to the theory of K3 surfaces. We begin with some general results on K3 surfaces, including the construction of their moduli space and some of its properties. We then move on to focus on the theory of polarized K3 surfaces, studying their moduli, degenerations and the compactification problem. This theory is then further enhanced to a discussion of lattice polarized K3 surfaces, which provide a rich source of explicit examples, including a large class of lattice polarizations coming from elliptic fibrations. Finally, we conclude by discussing the ample and …
We construct moduli spaces of semistable objects on an Enriques surface for generic Bridgeland stability condition and prove their projectivity. We further generalize classical results about moduli spaces of semistable sheaves on an Enriques surface to their Bridgeland counterparts. Using Bayer and Macrì's construction of a natural nef divisor varying with the stability condition, we begin a systematic exploration of the relation between wall-crossing on the Bridgeland stability manifold and the minimal model program for these moduli spaces. We give three applications of our machinery to obtai…
This paper is a sequel to the paper by A. Losev and Yu. Manin [LoMa1], in which new moduli stacks $\bar{L}_{g,S}$ of pointed curves were introduced. They classify curves endowed with a family of smooth points divided into two groups, such that the points of the second group are allowed to coincide. The homology of these stacks form components of the extended modular operad whose combinatorial models are further studied in [LoMa2]. In this paper the basic geometric properties of $\bar{L}_{g,S}$ are established using the notion of weighted stable pointed curves introduced recently by B. Hassett.…
We investigate differential geometric aspects of moduli spaces parametrizing solutions of coupled vortex equations over a compact Kaehler manifold X. These solutions are known to be related to polystable triples via a Kobayashi-Hitchin type correspondence. Using a characterization of infinitesimal deformations in terms of the cohomology of a certain elliptic double complex, we construct a Hermitian structure on these moduli spaces. This Hermitian structure is proved to be Kaehler. The proof involves establishing a fiber integral formula for the Hermitian form. We compute the curvature tensor o…
We show that for $α\in (2/3, 7/10)$, the log canonical model $\bar M_4(α)$ of the pair $(\bar M_4, αδ)$ is isomorphic to the moduli space $\bar M_4^{hs}$ of h-semistable curves, and that there is a birational morphism $Ξ: \bar M_4^{hs} \to \bar M_4(2/3)$ that contracts the locus of curves $C_1\cup_p C_2$ consisting of genus two curves meeting in a node $p$ such that $p$ is a Weierstrass point of $C_1$ or $C_2$. To obtain this morphism, we construct a compact moduli space $\bar M_{2,1}^{hs}$ of pointed genus two curves that have nodes, ordinary cusps and tacnodes as singularity, and prove that …
We discuss various aspects of the geometry of theta characteristics including the birational geometry of the spin moduli space of curves, parametrization of moduli via special K3 surfaces, as well as the relation with classical theta function theory and string theory in the form of the superstring measure. A historical view of the development of the subject is also presented.