Semistable principal bundles. II: Positive characteristics (Q1811258)

In his 1976 PhD thesis published in [Proc. Indian Acad. Sci. 106, 301--328 (1996; Zbl 0901.14007) and Proc. Indian Acad. Sci. 106, 421--449 (1996; Zbl 0901.14008)], \textit{A. Ramanathan} constructed the moduli space of semistable principal \(G\)-bundles on a complex projective curve. The paper under review uses techniques of a paper of \textit{V. Balaji} and \textit{C. Seshadri} [J. Algebra 258, 321--347 (2002; Zbl 1099.14502)] to generalize the above result to positive characteristic. The authors use low height representations to construct moduli spaces of \(G\)-bundles for curves to reduce the problem to the vector bundle case. Unfortunately, this technique already forces assumptions about the characteristic of the base field: the authors construct quasi-projective moduli spaces in high characteristic and they prove the moduli space is projective in even higher (but effectively computable) characteristic. Recently, there appeared two related papers about moduli spaces of \(G\)-bundles in positive characteristic. In the first one, due to \textit{T. Gomez}, the reviewer, \textit{A. Schmitt} and \textit{I. Sols} [Adv. Math. 219, No. 4, 1177--1245 (2008; Zbl 1163.14008); cf. also \url{arXiv:math/0506511}], the authors construct quasi-projective moduli spaces in arbitrary characteristic (and arbitrary dimension). In the second one, due to \textit{J. Heinloth} [Semistable reduction for \(G\)-bundles on curves, preprint, \url{arXiv:math/0602506}], its author proves a much stronger result on semistable reduction theorem in the curve case. This result implies projectivity of the moduli space of \(G\)-bundles in characteristics \(\geq 11\).