On the topological types of symmetries of elliptic-hyperelliptic Riemann surfaces (Q1885534)

A Riemann surface is called elliptic-hyperelliptic if it admits a conformal involution such that the quotient surface under the action of this involution has genus one. A symmetry of a Riemann surface is an anticonformal involution, and its topological type is the number of connected components of its fixed point set, together with the information of whether the fixed point set disconnects the surface or not. The authors study elliptic-hyperelliptic Riemann surfaces, showing that such a surface has at most eight conjugacy classes of symmetries with fixed points in its group of conformal or anticonformal automorphisms. They describe the possible topological types of four non-conjugate symmetries with fixed points in an elliptic-hyperelliptic Riemann surface, and apply the results to show that whenever \(g\) is even and greater than five, the set of real elliptic-hyperelliptic algebraic curves of genus \(g\) is not connected inside the moduli space of complex algebraic curves of genus \(g\). The authors remark that according to the work of \textit{M. Seppälä} [''Real algebraic curves in the moduli space of complex curves''. Compos. Math. 74, No. 3, 259--283 (1990; Zbl 0725.14019)], the equivalent statement for real hyperelliptic curves yields a different answer: the set of real hyperelliptic curves is always connected in the moduli space of complex algebraic curves.