Virtual moduli cycles and Gromov-Witten invariants of algebraic varieties

In this paper, we define the virtual moduli cycle of moduli spaces with perfect tangent-obstruction theory. The two interesting moduli spaces of this type are moduli spaces of vector bundles over surfaces and moduli spaces of stable morphisms from curves to projective varieties. As an application, we define the Gromov-Witten invariants of smooth projective varieties and prove all its basic properties.

     

Moduli of curves and spin structures via algebraic geometry

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 and on computations of Kodaira dimension. Our methods are purely algebro-geometric and rely on an induction argument on the number of marked points and the genus of the curves.

     

Equivariant cohomology of certain moduli of weighted pointed rational curves

We determine the action of the product of symmetric groups on the cohomology of certain moduli of weighted pointed rational curves. The moduli spaces that we study are of stable rational curves with m + n marked points where the first m marked points are distinct from all the others where as the last n may coincide among themselves. We give a recipe for calculating the equivariant Poincaré polynomials and list them for small m and n.     

Representation stability for the cohomology of arrangements associated to root systems

From Smyth’s classification, modular compactifications of the moduli space of pointed smooth rational curves are indexed by combinatorial data, the so-called extremal assignments. We explore their combinatorial structures and show that any extremal assignment is a finite union of atomic extremal assignments. We discuss a connection with the birational geometry of the moduli space of stable pointed rational curves. As applications, we study three special classes of extremal assignments: smooth, toric, and invariant with respect to the symmetric group action. We identify them with three combinatorial objects: simple intersecting families, complete multipartite graphs, and special families of integer partitions, respectively.     

Moduli spaces of weighted pointed stable curves

A weighted pointed curve consists of a nodal curve and a sequence of marked smooth points, each assigned a number between zero and one. A subset of the marked points may coincide if the sum of the corresponding weights is no greater than one. We construct moduli spaces for these objects using methods of the log minimal model program, and describe the induced birational morphisms between moduli spaces as the weights are varied. In the genus zero case, we explain the connection to Geometric Invariant Theory quotients of points in the projective line, and to compactifications of moduli spaces studied by Kapranov, Keel, and Losev-Manin.     

Hodge polynomials and birational types of moduli spaces of coherent systems on elliptic curves

In this paper we consider moduli spaces of coherent systems on an elliptic curve. We compute their Hodge polynomials and determine their birational types in some cases. Moreover we prove that certain moduli spaces of coherent systems are isomorphic. This last result uses the Fourier-Mukai transform of coherent systems introduced by Hernández Ruipérez and Tejero Prieto.     

Murphy’s law in algebraic geometry: Badly-behaved deformation spaces

We consider the question: “How bad can the deformation space of an object be?” The answer seems to be: “Unless there is some a priori reason otherwise, the deformation space may be as bad as possible.” We show this for a number of important moduli spaces. More precisely, every singularity of finite type over ? (up to smooth parameters) appears on: the Hilbert scheme of curves in projective space; and the moduli spaces of smooth projective general-type surfaces (or higher-dimensional varieties), plane curves with nodes and cusps, stable sheaves, isolated threefold singularities, and more. The objects themselves are not pathological, and are in fact as nice as can be: the curves are smooth, the surfaces are automorphism-free and have very ample canonical bundle, the stable sheaves are torsion-free of rank 1, the singularities are normal and Cohen-Macaulay, etc. This justifies Mumford’s philosophy that even moduli spaces of well-behaved objects should be arbitrarily bad unless there is an a priori reason otherwise. Thus one can construct a smooth curve in projective space whose deformation space has any given number of components, each with any given singularity type, with any given non-reduced behavior. Similarly one can give a surface over $\mathbb{F}_{p}We consider the question: “How bad can the deformation space of an object be?” The answer seems to be: “Unless there is some a priori reason otherwise, the deformation space may be as bad as possible.” We show this for a number of important moduli spaces. More precisely, every singularity of finite type over ℤ (up to smooth parameters) appears on: the Hilbert scheme of curves in projective space; and the moduli spaces of smooth projective general-type surfaces (or higher-dimensional varieties), plane curves with nodes and cusps, stable sheaves, isolated threefold singularities, and more. The objects themselves are not pathological, and are in fact as nice as can be: the curves are smooth, the surfaces are automorphism-free and have very ample canonical bundle, the stable sheaves are torsion-free of rank 1, the singularities are normal and Cohen-Macaulay, etc. This justifies Mumford’s philosophy that even moduli spaces of well-behaved objects should be arbitrarily bad unless there is an a priori reason otherwise. Thus one can construct a smooth curve in projective space whose deformation space has any given number of components, each with any given singularity type, with any given non-reduced behavior. Similarly one can give a surface over that lifts to ℤ/p⁷ but not ℤ/p⁸. (Of course the results hold in the holomorphic category as well.) It is usually difficult to compute deformation spaces directly from obstruction theories. We circumvent this by relating them to more tractable deformation spaces via smooth morphisms. The essential starting point is Mn?v’s universality theorem. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000) 14B12, 14C05, 14J10, 14H50, 14B07, 14N20, 14D22, 14B05     

The Hodge conjecture for certain moduli varieties

For smooth projective varietiesX over ℂ, the Hodge Conjecture states that every rational Cohomology class of type (p, p) comes from an algebraic cycle. In this paper, we prove the Hodge conjecture for some moduli spaces of vector bundles on compact Riemann surfaces of genus 2 and 3.     

On the moduli of surfaces admitting genus two fibrations over elliptic curves

In this paper, we study the structure, deformations and the moduli spaces of complex projective surfaces admitting genus two fibrations over elliptic curves. We observe that a surface admitting a smooth fibration as above is elliptic, and we employ results on the moduli of polarized elliptic surfaces to construct moduli spaces of these smooth fibrations. In the case of nonsmooth fibrations, we relate the moduli spaces to the Hurwitz schemes of morphisms of degree n from elliptic curves to the modular curve X(d), d ≥ 3. Ultimately, we show that the moduli spaces in the nonsmooth case are fiber spaces over the affine line with fibers determined by the components of . Received: 30 August 2006     

The moduli space of genus four even spin curves is rational

Using the Mori theory for threefolds, we prove that the moduli space of pairs of smooth curves of genus four and theta characteristics without global sections is a rational variety.     

Moduli of Stable Surfaces

This article is a survey of basic facts about the moduli spaces of stable surfaces. These spaces are projective compactifications of the moduli spaces of minimal surfaces of general type. They share few of the nice features of the moduli spaces of stable curves. Some of the main pathologies are presented with some historical remarks and some more recent results on the boundary of these spaces.Received: February, 2004     

Flag Hilbert schemes and moduli spaces of torsion plane sheaves

We find certain relations between flag Hilbert schemes of points on plane curves and moduli spaces of one-dimensional plane sheaves. We show that some of these moduli spaces are stably rational.     

Analytic moduli spaces of simple sheaves on families of integral curves

We prove the existence of fine moduli spaces of simple coherent sheaves on families of irreducible curves. Our proof is based on the existence of a universal upper bound of the Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity of such sheaves, which we provide.     

A note on Marino-Vafa formula

Hodge integrals over moduli spaces of curves appear naturally during the localization procedure in computation of Gromov-Witten invariants. A remarkable formula of Marino-Vafa expresses a generation function of Hodge integrals via some combinatorial and algebraic data seemingly unrelated to these apriori algebraic geometric objects. We prove in this paper by directly expanding the formula and estimating the involved terms carefully that except a specific type all the other Hodge integrals involving up to three Hodge classes can be calculated from this formula. This implies that amazingly rich information about moduli spaces and Gromov-Witten invariants is encoded in this complicated formula. We also give some low genus examples which agree with the previous results in literature. Proofs and calculations are elementary as long as one accepts Mumford relations on the reductions of products of Hodge classes.     

A note on Marino-Vafa formula

Hodge integrals over moduli spaces of curves appear naturally during the localization procedure in computation of Gromov-Witten invariants. A remarkable formula of Marino-Vafa expresses a generation function of Hodge integrals via some combinatorial and algebraic data seemingly unrelated to these apriori algebraic geometric objects. We prove in this paper by directly expanding the formula and estimating the involved terms carefully that except a specific type all the other Hodge integrals involving up to three Hodge classes can be calculated from this formula. This implies that amazingly rich information about moduli spaces and Gromov-Witten invariants is encoded in this complicated formula. We also give some low genus examples which agree with the previous results in literature. Proofs and calculations are elementary as long as one accepts Mumford relations on the reductions of products of Hodge classes.     

The orbifold cohomology of moduli of genus 3 curves

In this work we study the additive orbifold cohomology of the moduli stack of smooth genus g curves. We show that this problem reduces to investigating the rational cohomology of moduli spaces of cyclic covers of curves where the genus of the covering curve is g. Then we work out the case of genus g =  3. Furthermore, we determine the part of the orbifold cohomology of the Deligne–Mumford compactification of the moduli space of genus 3 curves that comes from the Zariski closure of the inertia stack of ${\mathcal{M}3}$ .     

Fourier-Mukai transforms for coherent systems on elliptic curves

We determine all the Fourier–Mukai transforms for coherentsystems consisting of a vector bundle over an elliptic curveand a subspace of its global sections, showing that these transformsare indexed by positive integers. We prove that the naturalstability condition for coherent systems, which depends on aparameter, is preserved by these transforms for small and largevalues of the parameter. By means of the Fourier–Mukaitransforms we prove that certain moduli spaces of coherent systemscorresponding to small and large values of the parameter areisomorphic. Using these results we draw some conclusions aboutthe possible birational type of the moduli spaces. We provethat for a given degree d of the vector bundle and a given dimensionof the subspace of its global sections there are at most d differentpossible birational types for the moduli spaces.     

Tilting Theoretical Approach to Moduli Spaces Over Preprojective Algebras

We apply tilting theory over preprojective algebras Λ to the study of moduli spaces of Λ-modules. We define the categories of semistable modules and give equivalences, so-called reflection functors, between them by using tilting modules over Λ. Moreover we prove that the equivalence induces an isomorphism of K-schemes between moduli spaces. In particular, we study the case when the moduli spaces are related to Kleinian singularities, and generalize some results of Crawley-Boevey (Am J Math 122:1027–1037, 2000).     

Stable degenerations of symmetric squares of curves

The stable (in the sense of the relative minimal model program) degenerations of symmetric squares of smooth curves of genus g>2 are computed. This information is used to prove that the component of the moduli space of stable surfaces parameterizing such surfaces is isomorphic to the moduli space of stable curves of genus g.