Book chapter
Moduli of K3 Surfaces and Irreducible Symplectic Manifolds
The name "K3 surfaces" was coined by A. Weil in 1957 when he formulated a research programme for these surfaces and theirmoduli. Since then, irreducible holomorphic symplectic manifolds have been introduced as a higher dimensional analogue of K3 surfaces. In this paper we present a review of this theory starting from the definition of K3 surfaces and going as far as the global Torelli theorem for irreducible holomorphic symplectic manifolds as recently proved by M. Verbitsky. For many years the last open question of Weil's programme was that of the geometric type of the moduli spaces of polarised K3 surfaces. We explain how this problem has been solved. Our method uses algebraic geometry, modular forms and Borcherds automorphic products. We collect and discuss the relevant facts from the theory of modular forms with respect to the orthogonal group O(2,n). We also give a detailed description of quasi pull-back of automorphic Borcherds products. This part contains previously unpublished results. We apply our geometric-automorphic method to study moduli spaces of both polarised K3 surfaces and irreducible symplectic varieties.
Laumon moduli spaces are certain smooth closures of the moduli spaces of maps from the projective line to the flag variety of GLn. We construct the action of the Yangian of sln in the cohomology of Laumon spaces by certain natural correspondences. We construct the action of the affine Yangian (two-parametric deformation of the universal enveloping algebra of the universal central extension of sln[s±1,t]) in the cohomology of the affine version of Laumon spaces. We compute the matrix coefficients of the generators of the affine Yangian in the fixed point basis of cohomology. This basis is an affine analogue of the Gelfand-Tsetlin basis. The affine analogue of the Gelfand-Tsetlin algebra surjects onto the equivariant cohomology rings of the affine Laumon spaces. The cohomology ring of the moduli space Mn,d of torsion free sheaves on the plane, of rank n and second Chern class d, trivialized at infinity, is naturally embedded into the cohomology ring of certain affine Laumon space. It is the image of the center Z of the Yangian of gln naturally embedded into the affine Yangian. In particular, the first Chern class of the determinant line bundle on Mn,d is the image of a noncommutative power sum in Z.
This book provides an overview of the latest developments concerning the moduli of K3 surfaces. It is aimed at algebraic geometers, but is also of interest to number theorists and theoretical physicists, and continues the tradition of related volumes like “The Moduli Space of Curves” and “Moduli of Abelian Varieties,” which originated from conferences on the islands Texel and Schiermonnikoog and which have become classics.
K3 surfaces and their moduli form a central topic in algebraic geometry and arithmetic geometry, and have recently attracted a lot of attention from both mathematicians and theoretical physicists. Advances in this field often result from mixing sophisticated techniques from algebraic geometry, lattice theory, number theory, and dynamical systems. The topic has received significant impetus due to recent breakthroughs on the Tate conjecture, the study of stability conditions and derived categories, and links with mirror symmetry and string theory. At the same time, the theory of irreducible holomorphic symplectic varieties, the higher dimensional analogues of K3 surfaces, has become a mainstream topic in algebraic geometry.
The Handbook of Moduli, comprising three volumes, offers a multi-faceted survey of a rapidly developing subject aimed not just at specialists but at a broad community of producers of algebraic geometry, and even at some consumers from cognate areas. The thirty-five articles in the Handbook, written by fifty leading experts, cover nearly the entire range of the field. They reveal the relations between these many threads and explore their connections to other areas of algebraic geometry, number theory, differential geometry, and topology. The goals of the Handbook are to introduce the techniques, examples, and results essential to each topic, and to say enough about recent developments to provide a gateway to the primary sources. Many articles are original treatments commissioned to bridge gaps in the literature and to make important problems accessible to a wide audience for the first time, and many others illustrate yogas and heuristics that experts use privately to guide intuition or simplify calculation, but that do not appear in published work aimed at other specialists.
This is the first of three volumes constituting the Handbook of Moduli.
In this paper we consider moduli spaces of polarized and numerically polarized Enriques surfaces. The moduli spaces of numerically polarized Enriques surfaces can be described as open subsets of orthogonal modular varieties of dimension 10. One of the consequences of our description is that there are only finitely many isomorphism classes of moduli spaces of polarized and numerically polarized Enriques surfaces. We use modular forms to prove for a number of small degrees that the Kodaira dimension of the moduli space of numerically polarized Enriques surfaces is negative. Finally we prove that there are infinitely many polarizatons for which the moduli space of numerically polarized Enriques surfaces is birational to the moduli space of unpolarized Enriques surfaces with a level 2 structure.
This book offers a concise yet thorough introduction to the notion of moduli spaces of complex algebraic curves. Over the last few decades, this notion has become central not only in algebraic geometry, but in mathematical physics, including string theory, as well.
The book begins by studying individual smooth algebraic curves, including the most beautiful ones, before addressing families of curves. Studying families of algebraic curves often proves to be more efficient than studying individual curves: these families and their total spaces can still be smooth, even if there are singular curves among their members. A major discovery of the 20th century, attributed to P. Deligne and D. Mumford, was that curves with only mild singularities form smooth compact moduli spaces. An unexpected byproduct of this discovery was the realization that the analysis of more complex curve singularities is not a necessary step in understanding the geometry of the moduli spaces.
The book does not use the sophisticated machinery of modern algebraic geometry, and most classical objects related to curves – such as Jacobian, space of holomorphic differentials, the Riemann-Roch theorem, and Weierstrass points – are treated at a basic level that does not require a profound command of algebraic geometry, but which is sufficient for extending them to vector bundles and other geometric objects associated to moduli spaces. Nevertheless, it offers clear information on the construction of the moduli spaces, and provides readers with tools for practical operations with this notion.
Based on several lecture courses given by the authors at the Independent University of Moscow and Higher School of Economics, the book also includes a wealth of problems, making it suitable not only for individual research, but also as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate coursework.
Let Mg;n denote the moduli space of genus g stable algebraic curves with n marked points. It carries the Mumford cohomology classes ki. A homology class in H*(Mg;n) is said to be k-zero if the integral of any monomial in the k-classes vanishes on it. We show that any k-zero class implies a partial differential equation for generating series for certain intersection indices on the moduli spaces. The genus homogeneous components of the Witten–Kontsevich potential, as well as of the more general Hodge potential, which include, in addition to psi-classes, intersection indices for lambda-classes, are special cases of these generating series, and the well-known partial differential equations for them are instances of our general construction.
We consider (local) parameterizations of Teichmüller space Tg,n (of genus g hyperbolic surfaces with n boundary components) by lengths of 6 g- 6 + 3 n geodesics. We find a large family of suitable sets of 6 g- 6 + 3. n geodesics, each set forming a special structure called "admissible double pants decomposition". For admissible double pants decompositions containing no double curves we show that the lengths of curves contained in the decomposition determine the point of Tg,n up to finitely many choices. Moreover, these lengths provide a local coordinate in a neighborhood of all points of Tg,n{set minus}X where X is a union of 3 g- 3 + n hypersurfaces. Furthermore, there exists a groupoid acting transitively on admissible double pants decompositions and generated by transformations exchanging only one curve of the decomposition. The local charts arising from different double pants decompositions compose an atlas covering the Teichmüller space. The gluings of the adjacent charts are coming from the elementary transformations of the decompositions, the gluing functions are algebraic. The same charts provide an atlas for a large part of the boundary strata in Deligne-Mumford compactification of the moduli space Mg,n.