Theta characteristics and their moduli (Q1931666)

The paper gives a very nice survey on the geometric theory of theta characteristics. Special attention is given to the historical development of the subject. The first 2 sections deal with the classical theory, interpreting a theta characteristic as a quadric in a vector space over the field of 2 elements. In the third section, Cornalba's compactification of the moduli spaces of stable spin curves as well as an important result of Ludwig concerning their resolution of singularities are outlined. In the fourth section some ways for construction effective divisors of these moduli spaces and the computation of their cohomology classes are discussed. The fifth section presents unirational parametrizations of these moduli spaces in small genus, using Mukai's models of special \(K3\) surfaces. The results of these 2 sections imply the main result of the paper, namely the birational classification of the moduli spaces of even and odd spin curves, due to the author and Verra. The last section gives some open problems related to syzygies and Brill-Noether stratification of these moduli spaces. Moreover an application to string theory is explained.