The classification of universal Jacobians over the moduli space of curves (Q373482)

The computation of the Kodaira dimension of different moduli spaces is a quite charming and often challenging problem. In the case of the moduli space of curves of genus \(g\), \(\mathcal M_g\), it has been widely studied and has stimulated the development of an enormous amount of beautiful mathematics, even though a complete classification is still not known. In the paper under review, the authors consider the case of the universal degree \(g\) Picard variety, \(\mathcal P^g_g\), giving a complete classification of its Kodaira dimension \(\kappa(\mathcal P^g_g)\). This variety is equipped with a natural forgetful morphism \(\alpha_g:\mathcal P^g_g\to \mathcal M_g\), so it is a variety of dimension \(4g-3\) endowed with an abelian fibration structure. It follows that \(\kappa(\mathcal M_g)\leq \kappa(\mathcal P^g_g)\leq 3g-3= \dim M_g\); in particular it has Kodaira dimension \(3g-3\) whenever \(\mathcal M_g\) is of general type and it could be natural to expect that they could coincide in general. Instead, the authors show that \(\mathcal P^g_g\) is unirational for \(g\leq 9\), that it has Kodaira dimension equal to \(3g-3\) for \(g\geq 12\) and equal to \(0\) and \(19\) for \(g=10\) and \(11\), respectively. These last two equalities are quite surprising as both \(\mathcal M_{10}\) and \(\mathcal M_{11}\) are known to be unirational. The proof is based on the fact that the global Abel-Jacobi map \(a_g:\overline{\mathcal C}_{g,g}\dashrightarrow \overline{\mathcal P^g_g}\), from the universal symmetric product of degree \(g\) to a compactification of \(\mathcal P^g_g\) establishes a birational isomorphism between the two. Therefore, the authors procede by computing more generally the Kodaira dimension of the universal symmetric product of degree \(n\), \(\overline{\mathcal C}_{g,n}\). In the last part of the paper the authors also consider the case of the moduli space of curves with marked points \(\mathcal M_{g,n}\) and they prove that it is uniruled for \(g\leq 9\) and for small values of \(n\), that they indicate in Theorem 0.6 in the Introduction. The Kodaira dimension of the universal degree \(d\) Picard variety \(\mathcal P^d_g\) for \(g\geq 4\) has been computed by Bini, Fontanari and Viviani in the case when \(\gcd(d+g-1,2g-2)=1\) in [\textit{G. Bini} et al., Int. Math. Res. Not. 2012, No. 4, 740--780 (2012; Zbl 1246.14038)] and by Casalaina-Martin, Kass and Viviani in general in [``The singularities and birational geometry of the universal compactified Jacobian'', Preprint \url{arXiv:1408.3494}] by using Caporaso's compactification of the universal Picard variety see [\textit{L. Caporaso}, J. Am. Math. Soc. 7, No. 3, 589--660 (1994; Zbl 0827.14014)].