The unirationality of the moduli space of curves of genus $\leq 14$

We show that $\mathcal{M}_{g,n}$, the moduli space of smooth curves of genus $g$ together with $n$ marked points, is unirational for $g=12$ and $2 \leq n\leq 4$ and for $g=13$ and $1 \leq n \leq 3$, by constructing suitable dominant families of projective curves in $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^2$ and $\mathbb{P}^3$ respectively. We also exhibit several new unirationality results for moduli spaces of smooth curves of genus $g$ together with $n$ unordered points, establishin...

We illustrate the use of the computer algebra system Macaulay2 for simplifications of classical unirationality proofs. We explicitly treat the moduli spaces of curves of genus g=10, 12 and 14.

We show that the moduli space of curves of genus 16 is NOT of general type.

We combine the idea of Chang and Ran [Invent. Math. 76 (1984), 41-54] of using monads of vector bundles on the projective 3-space to prove the unirationality of the moduli spaces of curves of low genus with our classification of globally generated vector bundles with small first Chern class $c_1$ on the projective 3-space to get an alternative argument for the unirationality of the moduli spaces of curves of degree at most 13 (based on the general framework of Chang and Ran).

The paper aims to give an account, both historical and geometric, on the diverse geography of rational parametrizations of moduli spaces related to curves. It is a contribution to the book Handbook of Moduli, editors G. Farkas and I. Morrison, to be published by International Press. Refereed version.

The object of this note is the moduli spaces of cubic fourfolds (resp., Gushel-Mukai fourfolds) which contain some special rational surfaces. Under some hypotheses on the families of such surfaces, we develop a general method to show the unirationality of the moduli spaces of the $n$-pointed such fourfolds. We apply this to some codimension 1 loci of cubic fourfolds (resp., Gushel-Mukai fourfolds) appeared in the literature recently.

The global geometry of the moduli spaces of higher spin curves and their birational classification is largely unknown for g >= 2 and r > 2. Using quite related geometric constructions, we almost complete the picture of the known results in genus g <= 4 showing the rationality of the moduli spaces of even and odd 4-spin curves of genus 3, of odd spin curves of genus 4 and of 3-spin curves of genus 4.

The moduli spaces of trigonal curves of odd genus $g>4$ are proven to be rational.

We prove rationality of the moduli variety of curves of genus 3.

This is a survey paper discussing the moduli problem for varieties of general type.