On the rigidity of moduli of curves in arbitrary characteristic

TL;DR

This paper proves the rigidity of moduli spaces of stable curves across arbitrary characteristic fields, extending known results from characteristic zero to positive characteristic, and determines automorphism groups in these cases.

Contribution

It extends the rigidity results of moduli spaces of stable curves to positive characteristic fields and characterizes their automorphism groups.

Findings

Rigidity of bar{M}_{0,n} over any perfect field.

Automorphism group of bar{M}_{0,n} is S_n for n .

bar{M}_{g,n} is rigid for g+n>4, except for bar{M}_{1,2}.

Abstract

The stack $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ of stable curves and its coarse moduli space $\overline{M}_{g,n}$ are defined over $\mathbb{Z}$, and therefore over any field. Over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, Hacking showed that $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ is rigid (a conjecture of Kapranov). Bruno and Mella for $g=0$, and the second author for $g\geq 1$ showed that its automorphism group is the symmetric group $S_n$, permuting marked points unless $(g,n)\in\{(0,4),(1,1),(1,2)\}$. The methods used in the papers above do not extend to positive characteristic. We show that in characteristic $p>0$, the rigidity of $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$, with the same exceptions as over $\mathbb{C}$, implies that its automorphism group is $S_n$. We prove that, over any perfect field, $\overline{M}_{0,n}$ is rigid and deduce that, over any field, $Aut(\overline{M}_{0,n})\cong S_{n}$ for $n\geq 5$. Going back to characteristic zero, we prove that for $g+n>4$, the coarse moduli space $\overline M_{g,n}$ is rigid, extending a result of Hacking who had proven it has no locally trivial deformations. Finally, we show that $\overline{M}_{1,2}$ is not rigid, although it does not admit locally trivial deformations, by explicitly computing his Kuranishi family.