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This is a sub-entry of
and
see there for background and context.
This entry contains a basic introduction to elliptic curves and their moduli spaces.
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the following are rough unpolished notes taken more or less verbatim from some seminar talk – needs attention, meaning: somebody should go through this and polish
Contents
elliptic curves
Definition An elliptic curve over is equivalently
Remark The third definition is the one that is easiest to generalize. For our simple purposes, though, the second one will be the most convenient.
From the second definition it follows that to study the moduli space of elliptic curves it suffices to study the moduli space of lattices in .
Definition A framed elliptic curve is an elliptic curve (in the sense of the first definition above) together with an ordered basis of with
A framed lattice in is a lattice together with an ordered basis of such that .
(So turning to in the plane means going counterclockwise).
moduli spaces of elliptic curves
this implies that
the upper half plane is in bijection with framed lattices in which in turn is in bijection with isomorphism classes of framed elliptic curves over
and we have
where acts by
Claim the quotient is biholomorphic to the disk and has a unique structure of a Riemann surface which makes the quotient map a holomorphic map
warning possibly something wrong here, audience doesn’t believe the bit about the disk
definition write
definition a homolorphic family of elliptic curves over a complex manifold is
-
a holomorphic map
-
together with a section of such that for any the pair is an elliptic curve (using the first definition above).
For every family
we would like to have
where
such that
-
is a holomorphic map
-
every holomorphic map corresponds to a family over ;
-
there is a universal family over
This is impossible . One can construct explicit counterexamples. These counterexamples involved elliptic curves with nontrivial automorphisms.
For instance
but see the discussion at moduli space for a discussion of the statement “it’s te automorphisms that prevent the moduli space from existing”
consider
given by
Then consider the family
is a family of elliptic curves over
and with
is a family of framed elliptic curves.
fact the space with the family is a fine moduli space for framed elliptic curves.
Consider any map
with pullback of the universal family
claim for every point there is an open neighbourhood such that one can choose 1-forms on which vary holomorphically with respect to .
Notice that locally every family of elliptic curves is framed (since we can locally extend a choice of basis for ). So
at and ,
isn’t locally liftable at and so it is not a univresal family of unframed curves.
orbifolds
definition A basic pointed orbifold (basic meaning global) is a triple , where
(here “pointed” because we specified the action instead of its iso-class under the following morphisms)
A morphism from to is a pair
where
such that for all
This really leads an enlargement of the plain category of spaces:
remark We have a faithful embedding of spaxces into orbifolds defined this way: for any connected semi-locally simply connected space with universal cover we have
warning notice all the simply-connectedness assumoptions above for making sense of this
remark let be a nice topological space. Let be its first homotopy group and let a discrete group action on .
then define
then we have an exact sequence
where is given by and by .
definition
For an orbifold write .
Then a homotopy from to
is a map
such that
-
-
,
now write
(the circle regarded as a global orbifold)
definition
The first homotopy group for our definition of orbifold is:
exercise show that this is
(recall again the simply-connectness assumoption!!)
definition* A morphism
is a weak homotopy equivalence if is an ismorphism and .
note Let be a contractible space on which acts properly, dic. and free, then
with and the projection is a weak homotopy equivalence.
definition a local system on with fiber a group homomorphism with
definition
Introduce the following notation for homotopy groups, homology and integral cohomology of our orbifolds with coefficients in a local system:
-
:= \pi_n(X)n \geq 2$
-
-
example has a to the
it follows that for local system we have
where on the right we have
We have all kinds of constructions on orbifolds by saying they are structures on with suitable extension of the action of to them
A on an orbifold is a vector bundle with isomorphism action by specified, covering that on .
for instance the of is given by in the obvious way.
definition say that acts virtually freely if a finite index subgroup of which acts freely on .
note acts virtually freely on
Let be a finite index subgroup which acts freely on .
set
the map
must be viewed as an unramified covering of degree .
supposedly important statement
definition
the of a global orbifold is
compare
moduli stack/orbifold of elliptic curves
definition
Define now the global orbifold
proposition
and similarly for
topological invariants of the moduli stack
Since the upper half plane is contractible, the homotopy type of are the same as that of and similarly for the (group)cohomology
and similalry for homology.
In particular
for all then
so that
fact the group is free for .
so far all -representations we have
due to the freeness we have also that
for
and hence
is
proposition
as s, we have an isomorphism
where
and acts on that by permuting . (Think of as the : there is a unique holomorphic automorphism of that permuting these three points in a given fashion.) While acts trivially.
proof*
now is known to be torsion free. It acts in a standard way on the .
A little discussion shows that
this implies that
the on two generators.
Then the second but last map
has a , from which we get that
and so
which is the end of the proof.
corollary The of the of s is
now consider the line bundle
with action on the total space for
call this on the . We will see that all line bundles are isomorphic to one of these.
remark
is a of iff
hence precisely if it defines a of weight ! This gives a geometric interpretation of modular functions.
and define an action of
where acts on by
and on by
the resulting bundle
we call
theorem for any there is a bijection between families of elliptic curves over and maps classify them.
Suppose we have an “isotrivial family” (meaning all fibers are isomorphic elliptic curves, i.e. a fiber bundle of elliptic curves)
recall that the group that defines as an is the first .
The only condition that we get from the definition of orbifold maps is that
factors through the of our base point
compactified moduli stack
one can see that over compact with we cannot have nontrivial famlies without singular fibers.
To get around that we want a compactification of the .
also fur purposes of intersection theory, we need to further compactify.
recall the description of as a weak quotient of . Then consider:
definition
Let
otice that this is now an which is no longer basic by the above definition. In fact, we can cover it by charts of basic orbifolds as follows: consider
with the arrows being maps of orbifolds whose precise details I haven’t typed.
then let be the punctured disk and realize the diagram
where the right morphism is just the inclusion
now we build a chart of consisting of the two patches and
from this we get the alternative
definition
the on the right manifestly glues in the “point at infinity” that is not hit by the map .
Gromov-Witten invariants
definition A stable curve (over ) of genus with marked points is a proper, connected curve with smooth marked points such that all singularities are nodes and such that the the group (of autos respecting the smooth marked points) is finite,
and such that the is .
Now is the for smooth curves of genus .
There is a
built fiberwise from the cotangent spaces of the elliptic curves.
one of them is obtained from one of the sections of the universal family . The fiber over a point is the cotangent space of the elliptic curve over that point at this section.
Write for the first
such that
then we get numbers called the (“of the point”)
example:
Let by affine coordinates on
Let and be two generic cubics, in particular there are nine joint zeros
called .
define then
and consider
That map has degree (!) since has degree 12
we also find that the diaginal map has degree 12. It follows that has degree 24:
Now let be one of these line bundles. Consider the
then by some argument not reproduced here we find
Then since the order of is 24 we find that the first is
extending structures to the compactified moduli space
recall that the of is, as a global
and also
and there is a on this given by
where the action is given by
since one finds the
meromorphic (holomorphic) sections of are s of weight , i.e. such that
the universal elliptic curve over is
Then we ended last time with describing the compactified moduli space
extending the line bundles
proposition has a universal extension to
proof
take
where acts by
note that since for all ay
where
is called a holomorphic of weight if is holomorphic and for all
remark modular forms of weight are in bijection with sections of the line bundle .
example for any in and for any we have
obviously for all
and for all with it follows that is holomorphic
since it follows that is a modular function of weight
fact
with and where is the
it follows that
is a modular form of weight (which is not a cusp form).
an important cusp form is
setting and
the
is a cusp form of weight 12. does not have any 0 in and it has a simple zero at .
we have an isomorphism
where on the right is the sheaf with at most a pole at . This isomorphism going from right to left is induced by multiplication with .
we have an exact sequence
where the first nontrivial map sends 1 to and the second one to the generator.
set for all
proposition is an even graded algebra freely generated by and and the ideal is generated by .
the dimensions are
dim M_{2k} =
\left\{
floor k/6 & for k = 1 mod 6
\\
1+ floor k/6 & otherwise
\right.
???????
extending the universal family of elliptic curves
Recall the three definition of s from above.
Now a fourth definition:
definition an elliptic curve is a smooth curve of degree 3 in together with a point in it.
-
that this equation implies the first one above follows from the genus formula, which says that a degree curve as in the definition has genus
-
that the first def implies this one