A construction of the Deligne-Mumford orbifold (Q852430)

The Deligne-Mumford moduli space is the space \(\overline M_{g,n}\) of isomorphism classes of stable nodal Riemann surfaces of arithmetic genus \(g\) with \(n\) marked points. A marked nodal Riemann surface is stable if and only if its isomorphism group is finite. The authors introduce the notion of a universal unfolding of a marked nodal Riemann surface and show that it exists if and only if the surface is stable. The most important theorem of the paper asserts that an unfolding is universal if and only if it satisfies a suitable infinitesimal condition (which is easier to verify). A natural construction based on the existence of universal unfoldings endows the Deligne-Mumford moduli space with an orbifold structure. Infinitesimally universal unfoldings are characterized in terms of certain ``nonlinear Hardy spaces'' associated to a desingularization. The idea is to decompose a Riemann surface \(\Sigma\) as a union of submanifolds \(\Omega\) and \(\Delta\), intersecting in their common boundary, and to identify holomorphic maps on \(\Sigma\) with pairs of holomorphic maps defined on \(\Omega\) and \(\Delta\) that agree on that common boundary. The authors introduce a notion of convergence of sequences of marked nodal Riemann surfaces called DM-convergence and prove that every sequence of stable marked nodal Riemann surfaces of type \((g,n)\) has a DM-convergent subsequence (compactness of \(\overline M_{g,n}\)). A correction to this paper has been published in J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 9, No. 4, 901--905 (2007).