Picard groups of the moduli spaces of semistable sheaves I

We compute the Picard group of the moduli spaceU′ of semistable vector bundles of rankn and degreed on an irreducible nodal curveY and show thatU′ is locally factorial. We determine the canonical line bundles ofU′ andU _L ′, the subvariety consisting of vector bundles with a fixed determinant. For rank 2, we compute the Picard group of other strata in the compactification ofU′.