Compactified Jacobians of Néron type (Q429556)

There are several possible extensions of the usual definition of the (degree \(d\)) Jacobian of a smooth curve to singular ones. The paper under review compares two of them in the case of a single stable curve \(X\) over an algebraically closed field. On the one hand, one can consider \(\bar P^d_X\), the coarse moduli scheme of of equivalence classes of degree \(d\) balanced line bundles on quasistable curves having \(X\) as stable model; equivalently, it is the fiber of \({\overline{Pic}}_{g,d} \to \bar M_g\) over \(X\), where \(\bar {Pic}_{g,d}\) is the compactification of the universal Picard stack constructed by the author in [J. Am. Math. Soc. 7, No. 3, 589--660 (1994; Zbl 0827.14014)]. The scheme \(\bar P^d_X\) is proper, and its smooth locus is a group scheme. On the other hand, one can choose a smoothing \(f : \mathcal X \to S\) over a DVR, where the generic fiber \(\mathcal X_\eta\) is smooth and \(\mathcal X_s \cong X\). Then the closed fiber of the Néron model of \({Pic}^d \mathcal X_\eta\), denoted \(N^d_X\), provides another generalization of the degree \(d\) Jacobian of \(X\). The main theorem of the paper is a characterization of the curves for which \(N^d_X\) coincides with the smooth locus of \(\bar P^d_X\) (in which case one says that \(\bar P^d_X\) is of Néron type). It turns out that this depends only on the dual graph of \(X\). Moreover, this property is invariant under smoothing a non-separating node. One can therefore assume that all nodes are separating. The theorem is that for a curve \(X\) all of whose nodes are separating, \(\bar P^d_X\) is of Néron type if and only \(X\) is \(d\)-general.