Speaker: Wei Ho (Columbia)

Title: Coregular representations and genus 1 curves (joint with Manjul Bhargava)
Date: January 26, 2012

1 Philosophy.
We want to get explicit constructions for moduli spaces. One possible way to do this is to construct
it as V /G where V is a linear representation of G. The motivations involve finding explicit descrip-
tions, computation, finding compactifications, and getting unirationality of the moduli space.

Example 1.1 (Plane curves). We think of plane curves as degree n polynomials in P2 , but only
up to change of basis. This is the quotient Symn (3)/GL3 .
If we restrict to smooth plane curves, this corresponds to some nondegeneracy condition on
Symn (3)/GL3 , which gives an open subset. When the curve is smooth, it has genus (n−1)(n−2)/2.
Also, it naturally has a degree n line bundle obtained by pulling back OP2 (1).
When n = 3, we get Sym3 (3)/GL3 which correspond to genus 1 curves C together with a degree
3 line bundle L modulo a natural notion of equivalence. Over C, the line bundle isn’t really extra
data since they differ by some automorphism of C (we lose it when we look at the coarse moduli
space). Furthermore, over C, both moduli spaces are P1 (j-invariant). The ring of (semi-)invariants
is a polynomial ring generated in degrees 4 and 6 (call them S and T ).
What about an arbitrary field K (avoid characteristic 2 and 3)? First, degree 3 line bundles
need not be equivalent under some K-automorphism of C. In general, the invariants S and T give
an equation for the Jacobian of C: y 2 = x3 + Sx + T (Weierstrass form).
We have M1,1 = {y 2 = x3 + Ax + B}, but note that (A, B) and (λ4 A, λ6 B) give the isomorphic
curves. So we can think of M1,1 as (A, B) modulo this scaling action.

If you want to classify some objects such that the C-points of the coarse moduli space is,
for example, a weighted projective space, then you might look for linear representations with a
polynomial ring of invariants. Such representations are called coregular and have been classified
by Littelmann when the representation is irreducible.

2 3 ⊗ 3 ⊗ 3.
Consider the representation V = V1 ⊗ V2 ⊗ V3 where dim Vi = 3. The group is G = GL(V1 ) ×
GL(V2 ) × GL(V3 ). If we pick bases, we can picture these 3-tensors as a 3 × 3 × 3 arrays of scalars.
Taking flattenings in different ways, we get 3 different 3 × 3 matrices of linear forms in 3 variables
x, y, z. Taking the determinant of these matrices gives a cubic equation in P2 and hence a smooth
genus 1 curve (generically). It turns out these curves are all isomorphic, so we get 3 different line
bundles L1 , L2 , L3 . The relation among the line bundles is that L21 = L2 ⊗ L3 .
To see the isomorphisms, we consider the restriction of the 3 × 3 matrix to the plane cubic. Its
kernel is 1-dimensional and gives a point in a different Vi , and such correspondences are isomor-
phisms. This gives us maps C1 → C2 → C3 → C1 , but the composition is not the identity. But
note that automorphisms of an elliptic curves are either translations by a point in the Jacobian or
a certain kind of flip. In particular, we also get the data of a special kind of point in the Jacobian
of C.
Conversely, given all of this information, one can recover the tensor, so we get an isomorphism
of moduli spaces.

1
Theorem 2.1. For any field K (of characteristic not 2 or 3), we have an isomorphism

{non-degenerate orbits of V (K)/G(K)} ∼

= {(C, L1 , L2 , L3 ) | L21 = L2 ⊗ L3 }
∼
= {(C, L, P ) | P is a special point of Jac(C)}.

The ring of invariants is generated by polynomials of degrees 6, 9, 12. They give an equation for
Jac(C):
y 2 + d9 y = x3 + d6 x2 + d12 x
The marked point corresponds to x = y = 0.
Without changing the flattenings, we can see all 3 line bundles from a single perspective (on C1 ).
Namely, we interpret the tensor as a linear map P(V1∗ ) → P(V2 ⊗ V3 ). Let Y be the determinantal
hypersurface and let X be the Segre variety P(V2 ) × P(V3 ). The adjugate matrix gives a birational
involution β : P(V2 ⊗ V3 ) 99K P(V2 ⊗ V3 ) with base locus X (and Y is blown down to X). This map
gives a way to construct the other two line bundles.

The construction in the last paragraph generalizes if we replace 3×3 matrices by 3×3 Hermitian
matrices (over a composition algebra). The corresponding “Severi varieties” are
O(2)
P2 −−−→ P5
O(1,1)
P2 × P2 −−−−→ P8
O(1)
Gr(2, 6) −−−→ P14
E 16 → P26

(the last space is a homogeneous space for E6 ). The corresponding split forms of the representations
are

(GL3 × GL3 , 3 ⊗ Sym2 (3)),

(GL33 , 3 ⊗ 3 ⊗ 3),
^
2
(GL3 × GL6 , 3 ⊗ (6)),
(GL3 × E6 , 3 ⊗ 27).

There is another family 2 ⊗ V where V is a special kind of representation (the simplest example
being V = 2 ⊗ 2 ⊗ 2.