Related papers: Boundary complexes of moduli spaces of curves in h…
The moduli space $\bar{M}_{0,n}$ of stable rational n-pointed curves has divisorial boundary with simple normal crossings. In this brief note I observe that the dual complex is a flag complex; that is, a collection of irreducible boundary…
We prove uniruledness of some moduli spaces $\bar{M}_{g,n}$ of stable curves of genus $g$ with $n$ marked points using linear systems on nonsingular projective surfaces containing the general curve of genus $g$. Precisely we show that…
In this thesis I give a new description for the moduli space of stable n pointed curves of genus zero and explicitly specify a natural isomorphism and inverse between them that preserves many important properties. I also give a natural…
We prove that the number of curves of a fixed genus g over finite fields is a polynomial function of the size of the field if and only if g is at most 8. Furthermore, we determine for each positive genus g the smallest n such that the…
We show that $\mathcal{M}_{g,n}$, the moduli space of smooth curves of genus $g$ together with $n$ marked points, is unirational for $g=12$ and $2 \leq n\leq 4$ and for $g=13$ and $1 \leq n \leq 3$, by constructing suitable dominant…
In this paper for each $n\ge g\ge 0$ we consider the moduli stack $\widetilde{\mathcal U}^{ns}_{g,n}$ of curves $(C,p_1,\ldots,p_n,v_1,\ldots,v_n)$ of arithmetic genus $g$ with $n$ smooth marked points $p_i$ and nonzero tangent vectors…
We construct moduli spaces of representations of quivers over arbitrary schemes and show how moduli spaces of pointed curves of genus zero like the Grothendieck-Knudsen moduli spaces $\overline{M}_{0,n}$ and the Losev-Manin moduli spaces…
We prove that the moduli stack of stable curves of genus g with n marked points is rigid, i.e., has no infinitesimal deformations. This confirms the first case of a principle proposed by Kapranov. It can also be viewed as a version of…
We show that the moduli space of degree $e$ maps from smooth genus $g \ge 1$ curves to an arbitrary low degree smooth hypersurface is singular when $e$ is large compared to $g$. We also give a lower bound for the dimension of the singular…
We prove that if $m \ge n-3$ then every $S_m$-invariant F-nef divisor on the moduli space of stable $n$-pointed curves of genus zero is linearly equivalent to an effective combination of boundary divisors. As an application, we determine…
We present the program Boundary, whose source files are available at http://people.sissa.it/~maggiolo/boundary/. Given two natural numbers g and n satisfying 2g+n-2>0, the program generates all genus g stable graphs with n unordered marked…
We compute the Mori cone of curves of the moduli space \M_{g,n} of stable n-pointed curves of genus g in the case when g and n are relatively small. For instance, we show that for g<14 every curve in \M_g is numerically equivalent to an…
In this paper we study the ample cone of the moduli space $\mgn$ of stable $n$-pointed curves of genus $g$. Our motivating conjecture is that a divisor on $\mgn$ is ample iff it has positive intersection with all 1-dimensional strata (the…
We define and count lattice points in the moduli space of stable genus g curves with n labeled points. This extends a construction of the second author for the uncompactified moduli space. The enumeration produces polynomials with top…
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…
For any finite abelian group G, we study the moduli space of abelian $G$-covers of elliptic curves, in particular identifying the irreducible components of the moduli space. We prove that, in the totally ramified case, the moduli space has…
Let $\mathcal{M}_{g,2}$ be the moduli space of curves of genus $g$ with a level-2 structure. We prove here that there is always a non hyperelliptic element in the intersection of four thetanull divisors in $\mathcal{M}_{6,2}$. We prove also…
Let $C$ be an algebraic curve of genus $g\ge2$. A coherent system on $C$ consists of a pair $(E,V)$, where $E$ is an algebraic vector bundle over $C$ of rank $n$ and degree $d$ and $V$ is a subspace of dimension $k$ of the space of sections…
In this mostly expository paper we review several known results about the cohomology of moduli spaces of smooth and stable curves, focusing in particular on low degree cohomology. We also give a new proof of Harer's theorem describing the…
On a general hypersurface of degree $d\leq n$ in $\mathbb P^n$ or $\mathbb P^n$ itself, we prove the existence of curves of any genus and high enough degree depending on the genus passing through the expected number $t$ of general points or…