We produce a flexible tool for contracting subcurves of logarithmic hyperelliptic curves, which is local around the subcurve and commutes with arbitrary base-change. As an application, we prove that a hyperelliptic multiscale differential determines a sequence of Gorenstein contractions of the underlying nodal curve, such that each meromorphic piece of the differential descends to generate the dualising bundle of one of the Gorenstein contractions. This is the first piece of evidence for a more general conjecture about limits of meromorphic differentials.

We denote by $\mathcal{H}_{d,g,r}$ the Hilbert scheme of smooth curves, which is the union of components whose general point corresponds to a smooth, irreducible, and non-degenerate curve of degree d and genus g in $\mathbb{P}^r.$ In this article, we study $\mathcal{H}_{15,g,5}$ for every possible genus g and determine when it is irreducible. We also study the moduli map $\mathcal{H}_{15,g,5}\rightarrow\mathcal{M}_g$ and several key properties such as gonality of a general element as well as characterizing smooth elements of each component.

This paper contains a method to prove the existence of smooth curves in positive characteristic whose Jacobians have unusual Newton polygons. Using this method, I give a new proof that there exist supersingular curves of genus $4$ in every prime characteristic. More generally, the main result of the paper is that, for every $g \geq 4$ and prime p, every Newton polygon whose p-rank is at least $g-4$ occurs for a smooth curve of genus g in characteristic p. In addition, this method resolves some cases of Oort’s conjecture about Newton polygons of curves.

We provide an explicit formula for all primary genus-zero $r$-spin invariants. Our formula is piecewise polynomial in the monodromies at each marked point and in $r$. To deduce the structure of these invariants, we use a tropical realisation of the corresponding cohomological field theories. We observe that the collection of all Witten–Dijkgraaf–Verlinde–Verlinde (WDVV) relations is equivalent to the relations deduced from the fact that genus-zero tropical CohFT cycles are balanced.

We compute the integral Chow ring of the moduli stack of smooth elliptic curves with n marked points for $3\leq n\leq 10$.

Given a connected reductive algebraic group G over an algebraically closed field, we investigate the Picard group of the moduli stack of principal G-bundles over an arbitrary family of smooth curves.

Oda’s problem, which deals with the fixed field of the universal monodromy representation of moduli spaces of curves and its independence with respect to the topological data, is a central question of anabelian arithmetic geometry. This paper emphasizes the stack nature of this problem by establishing the independence of monodromy fields with respect to finer special loci data of curves with symmetries, which we show provides a new proof of Oda’s prediction.

We introduce the abstract notion of a smoothable fine compactified Jacobian of a nodal curve, and of a family of nodal curves whose general element is smooth. Then we introduce the combinatorial notion of a stability assignment for line bundles and their degenerations.

We prove that smoothable fine compactified Jacobians are in bijection with these stability assignments.

We then turn our attention to fine compactified universal Jacobians – that is, fine compactified Jacobians for the moduli space $\overline {\mathcal {M}}_g$ of stable curves (without marked points). We prove that every fine compactified universal Jacobian is isomorphic to the one first constructed by Caporaso, Pandharipande and Simpson in the nineties. In particular, without marked points, there exists no fine compactified universal Jacobian unless $\gcd (d+1-g, 2g-2)=1$.

For $g\ge 2$ and $n\ge 0$, let $\mathcal {H}_{g,n}\subset \mathcal {M}_{g,n}$ denote the complex moduli stack of n-marked smooth hyperelliptic curves of genus g. A normal crossings compactification of this space is provided by the theory of pointed admissible $\mathbb {Z}/2\mathbb {Z}$-covers. We explicitly determine the resulting dual complex, and we use this to define a graph complex which computes the weight zero compactly supported cohomology of $\mathcal {H}_{g, n}$. Using this graph complex, we give a sum-over-graphs formula for the $S_n$-equivariant weight zero compactly supported Euler characteristic of $\mathcal {H}_{g, n}$. This formula allows for the computer-aided calculation, for each $g\le 7$, of the generating function $\mathsf {h}_g$ for these equivariant Euler characteristics for all n. More generally, we determine the dual complex of the boundary in any moduli space of pointed admissible G-covers of genus zero curves, when G is abelian, as a symmetric $\Delta $-complex. We use these complexes to generalize our formula for $\mathsf {h}_g$ to moduli spaces of n-pointed smooth abelian covers of genus zero curves.

In this paper, we present a solution to the problem of the analytic classification of germs of plane curves with several irreducible components. Our algebraic approach follows precursive ideas of Oscar Zariski and as a subproduct allows us to recover some particular cases found in the literature.

In the present paper, we study a new kind of anabelian phenomenon concerning the smooth pointed stable curves in positive characteristic. It shows that the topology of moduli spaces of curves can be understood from the viewpoint of anabelian geometry. We formulate some new anabelian-geometric conjectures concerning tame fundamental groups of curves over algebraically closed fields of characteristic $p>0$ from the point of view of moduli spaces. The conjectures are generalized versions of the Weak Isom-version of the Grothendieck conjecture for curves over algebraically closed fields of characteristic $p>0$ which was formulated by Tamagawa. Moreover, we prove that the conjectures hold for certain points lying in the moduli space of curves of genus $0$.

Let $\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g, m|n}$ denote Hassett’s moduli space of weighted pointed stable curves of genus g for the heavy/light weight data

$$\begin{align*}\left(1^{(m)}, 1/n^{(n)}\right),\end{align*}$$

and let $\mathcal {M}_{g, m|n} \subset \overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g, m|n}$ be the locus parameterizing smooth, not necessarily distinctly marked curves. We give a change-of-variables formula which computes the generating function for $(S_m\times S_n)$-equivariant Hodge–Deligne polynomials of these spaces in terms of the generating functions for $S_{n}$-equivariant Hodge–Deligne polynomials of $\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g,n}$ and $\mathcal {M}_{g,n}$.

Let $\Sigma $ be a nonempty subset of the set of prime numbers which is either equal to the entire set of prime numbers or of cardinality one. In the present paper, we continue our study of the pro-$\Sigma $ fundamental groups of hyperbolic curves and their associated configuration spaces over algebraically closed fields in which the primes of $\Sigma $ are invertible. The present paper focuses on the topic of comparison between the theory developed in earlier papers concerning pro-$\Sigma $ fundamental groups and various discrete versions of this theory. We begin by developing a theory concerning certain combinatorial analogues of the section conjecture and Grothendieck conjecture. This portion of the theory is purely combinatorial and essentially follows from a result concerning the existence of fixed points of actions of finite groups on finite graphs (satisfying certain conditions). We then examine various applications of this purely combinatorial theory to scheme theory. Next, we verify various results in the theory of discrete fundamental groups of hyperbolic topological surfaces to the effect that various properties of (discrete) subgroups of such groups hold if and only if analogous properties hold for the closures of these subgroups in the profinite completions of the discrete fundamental groups under consideration. These results make possible a fairly straightforward translation, into discrete versions, of pro-$\Sigma $ results obtained in previous papers by the authors. Finally, we discuss a construction that was considered previously by M. Boggi in the discrete case from the point of view of the present paper.

Following Faber–Pandharipande, we use the virtual localization formula for the moduli space of stable maps to $\mathbb {P}^{1}$ to compute relations between Hodge integrals. We prove that certain generating series of these integrals are polynomials.

This paper goes beyond Katz–Sarnak theory on the distribution of curves over finite fields according to their number of rational points, theoretically, experimentally, and conjecturally. In particular, we give a formula for the limits of the moments measuring the asymmetry of this distribution for (non-hyperelliptic) curves of genus $g\geq 3$. The experiments point to a stronger notion of convergence than the one provided by the Katz–Sarnak framework for all curves of genus $\geq 3$. However, for elliptic curves and for hyperelliptic curves of every genus, we prove that this stronger convergence cannot occur.

Hyperelliptic mapping class groups are defined either as the centralizers of hyperelliptic involutions inside mapping class groups of oriented surfaces of finite type or as the inverse images of these centralizers by the natural epimorphisms between mapping class groups of surfaces with marked points. We study these groups in a systematic way. An application of this theory is a counterexample to the genus $2$ case of a conjecture by Putman and Wieland on virtual linear representations of mapping class groups. In the last section, we study profinite completions of hyperelliptic mapping class groups: we extend the congruence subgroup property to the general class of hyperelliptic mapping class groups introduced above and then determine the centralizers of multitwists and of open subgroups in their profinite completions.

We prove that the nonvarying strata of abelian and quadratic differentials in low genus have trivial tautological rings and are affine varieties. We also prove that strata of k-differentials of infinite area are affine varieties for all k. Vanishing of homology in degree higher than the complex dimension follows as a consequence for these affine strata. Moreover we prove that the stratification of the Hodge bundle for abelian and quadratic differentials of finite area is extremal in the sense that merging two zeros in each stratum leads to an extremal effective divisor in the boundary. A common feature throughout these results is a relation of divisor classes in strata of differentials as well as its incarnation in Teichmüller dynamics.

For $\theta $ a small generic universal stability condition of degree $0$ and A a vector of integers adding up to $-k(2g-2+n)$, the spaces $\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g,A}^\theta $ constructed in [AP21, HMP+22] are observed to lie inside the space $\textbf {Div}$ of [MW20], and their pullback under $\textbf {Rub} \to \textbf {Div}$ of loc. cit. to be smooth. This provides smooth and modular modifications $\widetilde {\mathcal {M}}_{g,A}^\theta $ of $\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g,n}$ on which the logarithmic double ramification cycle can be calculated by several methods.

In this work, we study the Humbert-Edge curves of type 5, defined as a complete intersection of four diagonal quadrics in ${\mathbb{P}}^5$. We characterize them using Kummer surfaces, and using the geometry of these surfaces, we construct some vanishing thetanulls on such curves. In addition, we describe an argument to give an isomorphism between the moduli space of Humbert-Edge curves of type 5 and the moduli space of hyperelliptic curves of genus 2, and we show how this argument can be generalized to state an isomorphism between the moduli space of hyperelliptic curves of genus $g=\frac{n-1}{2}$ and the moduli space of Humbert-Edge curves of type $n\geq 5$ where $n$ is an odd number.

Let $(S,L)$ be a general polarised Enriques surface, with L not numerically 2-divisible. We prove the existence of regular components of all Severi varieties of irreducible nodal curves in the linear system $|L|$ , that is, for any number of nodes $\delta =0, \ldots , p_a(L)-1$ . This solves a classical open problem and gives a positive answer to a recent conjecture of Pandharipande–Schmitt, under the additional condition of non-2-divisibility.