Abstract

Moduli spaces of stable pointed curves play an important role in algebraic geometry. This School will have one course on vector bundles of coinvariants and on conformal blocks and another one on their cohomology classes in relation with those of moduli of abelian varieties. The cohomology of moduli spaces of curves and abelian varieties carries several natural classes. We focus on the tautological classes and the cohomology classes related to spaces of modular forms. The problem of determining relationships between the tautological classes turns out to be particularly interesting. Moduli spaces of curves carry vector bundles of coinvariants and conformal blocks; they are invariants of a curve C attached to a Lie group G that are canonically isomorphic to global sections of an ample line bundle on the moduli stack of certain G-bundles on C. These are generalized theta functions in case C is smooth. In case g=0, the bundles of co-invariants are globally generated, and their first Chern classes are semi-ample line bundles on the moduli of curves, and shed light on its birational geometry. We can also use the moduli space of curves to learn about generalized theta functions.