On the determinant of the bundle of meromorphic quadratic differentials on the Deligne-Mumford compactification of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces (Q811500)

Let \(\hat Q\) be the bundle of meromorphic quadratic differentials associated to the Deligne-Mumford compactification of the moduli space of genus \(g\) Riemann surfaces, \(\bar{\mathcal M}_ g\). In other words, the direct image of the square from the relative dualising sheaf of the universal curve. In this paper we show that \(\det\hat Q\) is good in the sense of Mumford with respect to the Weil-Petersson metric. We also show that \(\det\hat Q\) admits a smooth metric on \(\bar{\mathcal M}_ g\) with positive curvature form; this allows us to generalize a result of Mumford on the log general type structure of \(\bar{\mathcal M}_ g\). As a byproduct of the proof, we exhibit explicitly a complete Kähler metric of finite volume on \({\mathcal M}_ g\).