The non-existence of stable Schottky forms
Abstract
Let be the Satake compactification of the moduli space of principally polarized abelian -folds and the closure of the image of the moduli space of genus curves in under the Jacobian morphism. Then lies in the boundary of for any . We prove that and do not meet transversely in , but rather that their intersection contains the th order infinitesimal neighbourhood of in . We deduce that there is no non-trivial stable Siegel modular form that vanishes on for every . In particular, given two inequivalent positive even unimodular quadratic forms and , there is a curve whose period matrix distinguishes between the theta series of and .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1112.6137,
title = {The non-existence of stable Schottky forms},
author = {G. Codogni and N. I. Shepherd-Barron},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.6137},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Corrected version, using Yamada's correct version of Fay's formula for the period matrix of a certain degenerating family of curves. To appear in Compositio Mathematica