Cutting out arithmetic Teichmüller curves in genus two via theta functions (Q2361117)

Square-tiled surfaces are covers of the square torus, ramified over at most one point. Affinely deforming the squares into parallelograms yields a curve in the moduli space of curves, called arithmetic Teichmüller curve. For these Teichmüller curves, the classification problem is only solved for genus 2 surfaces with a single ramification point. For genus two square-tiled covers with two ramification points we have three invariants: the spin, the torsion order of the branch points and the degree of a minimal intermediate covering. It is conjectured that these are the only invariants, i.e., that the set of genus two degree \(d\) covers of the torus with given torsion order and spin is irreducible. The authors of this paper propose to attack this conjecture by first computing the class of these covers in the Picard group of a pseudo-Hilbert modular surface and in the second step to argue that this class is not too divisible and that potential summands cannot be Teichmüller curves. In the paper, the authors perform the first step for any odd degree \(d\). Moreover, as a corollary of the computation of the class of arithmetic genus two Teichmüller curves in the Picard group of pseudo-Hilbert modular surfaces, they give a closed formula for the number of genus 2 square-tiled surfaces with fixed torsion order and spin. The strategy for the proof of previous results is the following: instead of locating a Teichmüller curve inside the compactified pseudo-HIlbert modular surface \(X_{d^{2}}\), whose open part \(X_{d^{2}}^{0}\) parametrizes abelian surfaces with multiplication by a pseudo-quadratic order, they locate the branch points of the covering map from the flat surface to the torus inside the universal family of abelian surfaces over the open subset \(X_{d^{2}}^{0}\). The image of the intersection of three divisorial conditions in \(X_{d^{2}}\) is the Teichmüller curve. They move the intersection calculations to a reasonable compactification \(A_{d^{2}}\) of the previous universal family of abelian surfaces. The family \(A_{d^{2}}\) comes with some obvious divisors given by Jacobi forms. Carefully computations have to be performed in the boundaries of these compactifications.