Base change behavior of the relative canonical sheaf related to higher dimensional moduli (Q1951007)

In this paper it is shown that one of the aimed assumptions for constructing the moduli space of stable schemes does not hold. I.e., even for flat families of normal varieties the relative canonical sheaf is not compatible with base change. The proof of the main theorem (1.2) is constructive and gives a method to find flat families of \(S_j\) varieties (with \(\dim (X) > j \geq 2\)) and central fiber with just a singular point for which the base change does not hold. Furthermore, interesting results with several geometric consequences are given considering the intersection of the \(S_{n-1}\) locus and the components of the central fiber.