Stable pair, tropical, and log canonical compactifications of moduli spaces of del Pezzo surfaces (Q836899)

This paper studies compactifications of the moduli space \(Y^n\) of smooth marked del Pezzo surfaces of degree \(9-n\). Each such surface \(S\) comes with a natural boundary \(B\) and thus \(Y^n\) can be compactified inside the Kollár--Shepherd-Barron--Alexeev moduli stack of stable surfaces with boundary [\textit{J. Kollár, N. I. Shepherd-Barron}, Invent. Math. 91, No. 2, 299--338 (1988; Zbl 0642.14008)], [\textit{V. Alexeev}, Log canonical singularities and complete moduli of stable pairs, Preprint, \url{arXiv:math.AG/9608013}]. This compactification of \(Y^n\) is shown to be a smooth projective variety and its boundary is a union of smooth divisors with normal crossings for \(n \geq 5\) or \(n=6\) and \(\text{char}(k)\neq 2\). For \(n\leq 6\) or \(n=7\) and \(\text{char}(k)\neq 2\), \(Y^n\) has a smooth log canonical model whose boundary is a union of smooth divisors with normal crossings. Also morphisms \(Y^{n+1}\rightarrow Y^n\) and their extensions to the compactifications are studied. These morphisms are analogous to the forgetful maps from the moduli space of stable marked curves forgetting a marked point. The authors study various aspects of the moduli spaces and their relations to tropical geometry, toric geometry and root systems. Tropical geometry is an essential tool to construct the compactifications. The same construction applied to the moduli space \(M_{0,n}\) of \(n\)-marked rational smooth curves yields the moduli space \(\overline{M}_{0,n}\) of \(n\)-marked rational stable curves. Some of the moduli spaces have been treated by other authors before [e.g. \textit{J. Sekiguchi}, Kyushu J. Math. 48, No. 1, 123--168 (1994; Zbl 0841.14009); Kyushu J. Math. 54, No. 1, 7--37 (2000; Zbl 1040.14022)]. This paper offers a unified approach however, and settles e.g.\ a conjecture formulated by Sekiguchi.