Cohomological invariants of the stack of hyperelliptic curves of odd genus (Q2040588)

The author computes the cohomological invariants of the moduli stack \(\mathcal{H}_g\) of smooth hyperelliptic curves of odd genus \(g.\) Let \(p\) be a positive number, \(k_0\) a field whose characteristic does not divide \(p\) and let \(G\) be an algebraic group. A cohomological invariant of the classifying stack \(\mathcal{B}G\) with coefficients in \(\mathbb{F}_p\) is defined as a natural transformation of functors \[P_{\mathcal{B}G}\rightarrow \operatorname{H}^\bullet:=\oplus_iH^i_\text{ét}(-,\mu_p^{\otimes i}),\] where \(P_{\mathcal{B}G}\) is the functor of points of \(\mathcal{B}G\) and \(\mu_p\) is the group of \(p\)th roots of unity. Cohomological invariants first appeared in [\textit{E. Witt}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 176, 31--44 (1936; Zbl 0015.05701)], while the above formulation is by [\textit{S. Garibaldi} et al., Cohomological invariants in Galois cohomology. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (2003; Zbl 1159.12311)]. More recently, the notion of cohomological invariants has been exteded from classifying stacks to smooth algebraic stacks over \(k_0\) by [\textit{R. Pirisi}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 370, No. 3, 1885--1906 (2018; Zbl 1421.14002) ]: a cohomological invariant for a smooth algebraic stack \(\mathcal{X}\) over \(k_0\) is a natural transformation \[P_\mathcal{X}\rightarrow\operatorname{H}^\bullet,\] which satisfies a certain continuity condition. The main result of the present paper is the computation of the graded-commutative ring of cohomological invariants \(\operatorname{Inv}^\bullet(\mathcal{H}_g)\), over a field of characteristic \(\neq 2\) and with \(p=2.\) This also represents an important case because for \(p=2\) the cohomological invariants present a richer structure and the reasons behind this are inspected in another work by the author, together with \textit{Pirisi}, in preparation. The computation uses a similar strategy to the one in [\textit{R. Pirisi}, Doc. Math. 23, 969--996 (2018; Zbl 1401.14069)]. It is based on the isomorphism between \(\operatorname{Inv}^\bullet(\left[X/G\right]),\) with \(X\) a smooth scheme and \(G\) an algebraic group acting on it, and the equivariant Chow group with coefficients \(A^0_G(X,\operatorname{H}^\bullet),\) first introduced by [\textit{M. Rost}, Doc. Math. 1, 319--393 (1996; Zbl 0864.14002)] as a generalization of ordinary Chow groups.