Modifications of Hodge bundles and enumerative geometry: the stable hyperelliptic locus (Q745877)

The paper under review, which is a continuation of author's study of finite subschemes of families of nodal-or-smooth curves (see e.g. [\textit{Z. Ran}, Compos. Math. 141, No. 5, 1191--1212 (2005; Zbl 1093.14074); Asian J. Math. 17, No. 2, 193--264 (2013; Zbl 1282.14097); J. Algebra 399, 634--656 (2014; Zbl 1319.14035)]), presents a study of the stable hyperelliptic locus, i.e. the closure, in the Deligne-Mumford moduli of stable curves, of the locus of smooth hyperelliptic curves. Roughly speaking, the main result of the paper says the following: given a family of stable curves, there is a bundle map (called \textit{(degree-2) Brill-Noether map}) over an explicit birational modification of its second symmetric product, whose degeneracy locus consists of the closure of the hyperelliptic locus, which is reduced of the expected dimension, plus an explicit and computable excess locus. In this way, the fundamental class of the closure of the hyperelliptic locus can be computed as an element of the Mumford tautological ring.