Moduli of polarized Hodge structures (Q2425543)

The paper under review, which is mainly expository, contains the main body of the author's talks at the conference ``CIMPA-UNESCU-IPM School on Recent Topics in Geometric Analysis, 2006''. Its objective is to introduce the reader to the literature on the moduli of polarized Hodge structures and related compactification problems after Satake, Baily and Borel. The contents of this paper are best presented by the author's summary: ``Around 1970 Griffiths introduced the moduli of polarized Hodge structures/ the period domain \(D\) and described a dream to enlarge \(D\) to a moduli space of degenerating polarized Hodge structures. Since in general \(D\) is not a Hermitian symmetric domain, he asked for the existence of a certain automorphic cohomology theory for \(D\), generalizing the usual notion of automorphic forms on symmetric Hermitian domains. Since then there have been many efforts in the first part of Griffith's dream but the second part still lives in darkness. The objective of the present text is two-folded. First, we give an exposition of the subject. Second, we give another formulation of the Griffiths problem, based on the classical Weierstrass uniformization theorem.''