Modifications of Hodge bundles and enumerative geometry : the stable hyperelliptic locus

Abstract: We study the stable hyperelliptic locus, i.e. the closure, in the Deligne- Mumford moduli space of stable curves, of the locus of smooth hyperelliptic curves. Working on a suitable blowup of the relative Hilbert scheme (of degree 2) associated to a family of stable curves, we construct a bundle map ('degree-2 Brill-Noether') from a modification of the Hodge bundle to a tautological bundle, whose degeneracy locus is the natural lift of the stable hyperelliptic locus plus a simple residual scheme. Using intersection theory on Hilbert schemes and Fulton-Macpherson residual intersection theory, the class of the structure sheaf and various other sheaves supported on the stable hyperelliptic locus can be computed by Porteous' formula.