Moduli of fibered surface pairs from twisted stable maps (Q2423435)

The authors study the moduli space of stable fibered surface pairs by using twisted stable maps. A fibered surface pair is of the form \((f: X \to C, S + F)\) where \(X \to C\) is a flat proper surjective map from a smooth surface \(X\) to a smooth curve \(C\), \(S\) is a sum of finitely many sections to \(X \to C\), and \(F\) is a sum of finitely many reduced fibers. Its stability is in the sense of the minimal model program. The main result of the paper is the construction of a certain compactification of the moduli space of fibered surface stable pairs, generalizing earlier work of \textit{D. Abramovich} and \textit{A. Vistoli} [in: Recent progress in intersection theory. Based on the international conference on intersection theory, Bologna, Italy, December 1997. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser. 1--31 (2000; Zbl 0979.14018); J. Am. Math. Soc. 15, No. 1, 27--75 (2002; Zbl 0991.14007)]. Moreover, this compactification is compared to \textit{V. Alexeev}'s space of stable maps [in: Higher dimensional complex varieties. Proceedings of the international conference, Trento, Italy, June 15--24, 1994. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 1--22 (1996; Zbl 0896.14014)] and the KSBA compactification. As an application, the authors describe the boundary of a compactification of the moduli space of elliptic surfaces. Section 2 collects background materials regarding the theory of stable pairs \((X, D)\) with \(X\) being a projective variety and \(D\) being a \(\mathbb Q\)-divisor on \(X\), Alexeev stable maps \(f: (X, D) \to M\) with \(X\) being a surface and \(M\) being the target, and their moduli spaces. Section 3 recalls the space of twisted stable maps of Abramovich and Vistoli. Section 4 uses twisted stable maps to extend the fibered surface results to stable fibered surface pairs. In particular, the authors obtain birational models of stable fibered surface pairs \((f : X \to C, S + F)\) with section \(S\) and reduced marked fibers \(F\), and compare these to the log canonical models provided by the minimal model program. Section 5 studies variations of the moduli problem for fibered surfaces that reintroduce the data of the fibration. Results in the previous sections are applied to elliptic surfaces in Section 6.