On families of Riemann surfaces with automorphisms (Q2031564)

A compact Riemann surface of genus \(g\) has at most \(84(g-1)\) conformal automorphisms. A lot of results have been obtained since XIX Century concerning surfaces of genus \(g\) with \(ag+b\) automorphisms, for \(a\) and \(b\) integers. The present paper studies the maximal possible order of the automorphism group of a family of Riemann surfaces of genus \(g\), for all \(g\), if that order has the form \(ag+b\). Call \(N_d(g)\) the integer of the form \(ag+b\), \(a, b \in \mathbb{Z}\), such that for each \(g \geq 2\) there exists a \(d\)-dimensional family of Riemann surfaces of genus \(g\) with an automorphism group of order \(N_d(g)\), and for some \(g \geq 2\) there is no such family with more than \(N_d(g)\) automorphisms. The values of \(N_0(g)\), \(N_1(g)\) and \(N_2(g)\) are known to be \(8g+8\), \(4g+4\) and \(4g-4\), respectively. In the present article the authors prove that \(N_3(g) = 2g-2\), while \(N_4(g)\) does not exist. If we restrict to \(g \geq 3\) odd (respectively even), then \(N_4(g)\) is \(g-1\) (respectively \(g\)). In order to get these results, the authors obtain upper bounds and then construct explicitly the families attaining the bounds. Finally, they study carefully those families, obtaining conditions for their uniqueness, describing them as subsets of the moduli space, and providing an isogeny decomposition of the corresponding families of Jacobian varieties.