The moduli space of étale double covers of genus 5 curves is unirational (Q953168)

This paper is devoted to the proof of the unirationality of the Prym moduli space of étale double covers of genus 5 curves, denoted \(\mathcal R_5\). The argument goes as follows. Given a general quartic surface in \(\mathbb P^3\) with six ordinary double points as singluarities, the discriminant of the projection from one of them is a plane sextic with five nodes (hence a curve of geometric genus 5). Via a geometric construction due to Clemens one can associate in a natural way to the quartic surface the normalization of the discriminant curve together with an étale double cover of it. The moduli space \(\mathcal Q\) of quartic surfaces with six double points -one marked- is easily shown to be unirational. It is then sufficient to prove that the above constructed map \(\mathcal Q\rightarrow \mathcal R_5\) is dominant. This is done by proving that the corresponding map to the moduli space \(\mathcal M_5\) of genus five curves is generically surjective. The authors provide two different arguments; the first, more geometrical, exhibits an inverse image for a general curve in \(\mathcal M_5\). The second method is computational, and reduces the proof to the computation of the rank of a certain matrix. Using the fact that the Prym map from \(\mathcal R_5\) to the moduli space of principally polarized abelian four-folds \(\mathcal A_4\) is dominant, the result also implies the unirationality of \(\mathcal A_4\), thus providing an alternative proof to the original one given by Clemens via intermediate Jacobians.