A Hurwitz divisor on the moduli of Prym curves (Q2071809)

Let \(\overline{\mathcal {R}}_g\) be the usual compactification of the moduli space of genus \(g\) Prym curves, i.e. \(\mathcal{R}_g\) is the moduli space of pairs \((C,\eta)\) with \(C\) a smooth genus \(g\) curve and \(\eta\) a \(2\)-torsion line bundle on \(C\). For every even genus \(g=2i\ge 4\) and the length \(g-1\) partition \(\mu = (4,2,\dots ,2,-2,\dots ,-2)\) of \(0\) let \(\overline{D}(\mu)\) be the divisor of \(\overline{\mathcal {R}}_g\) corresponding to the pairs \((C,\eta)\) with \(\eta \cong \mathcal {O}_C(2x_1+\cdots +x_{i-1}-x_i-\cdots -x_{g-1})\). The author computes the first coefficients of the class of \(\overline{D}(\mu)\) in \(\mathrm{Pic}_{\mathbb {Q}}\overline{\mathcal {R}}_g)\). If \(g\le 23\) these are the only coefficients needed to describe \(D(\mu)\). To do the computation the author need to prove several new results, mostly extensions of previous results. The second part of the paper studies enumerative results for the proper Hurwitz space with as target an element of \(\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{1,1}\), i.e. stable \(1\)-pointed elliptic curve.