Moduli of lattice-polarized K3 surfaces and boundedness of Brauer groups

Abstract

Inspired by constructions over the complex numbers of Dolgachev and Alexeev-Engel, we define moduli stacks $\mathcal{M}_{(L,\mathcal{A})/\mathbb{Z}}$ of lattice-polarized K3 surfaces over arbitrary bases, paying particular attention to the open locus $\mathcal{P}_{(L,\mathcal{A})/\mathbb{Z}}$ of primitive lattice polarizations. We introduce the notion of very small ample cones $\mathcal{a}$, after Alexeev and Engel's small cones, to construct smooth, separated stacks of lattice polarized K3 surfaces $\mathcal{P}_{(L,\mathcal{a})/\mathbb{Z}[1/N]}$ over suitable open subsets of $\textrm{Spec}(\mathbb{Z})$. We add level structures, coming from classes in $\mathrm{H}^2(X,\mu_n)$, to build moduli stacks $\mathcal{P}^{[n]}_{(L,\mathcal{A})/\mathbb{Z}}$ with a natural action by $\mathcal{P}_{(L,\mathcal{A})}\otimes \mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$ whose associated quotient $\mathcal{Q}^{[n]}_{(L,\mathcal{A})}$ contains an open substack $\mathcal{Q}^{(n)}_{(L,\mathcal{A})}$ whose points parametrize pairs K3 surfaces $X$ such that $\textrm{Pic}(X) \simeq L$, together with a class $\alpha \in \textrm{Br}(X)$ of order $n$. When $L$ has rank 19, we show that the coarse moduli space $\mathrm{Q}_{(L,\mathcal{a}),\mathbb{C}}^{(n)}$ is a union of quasi-projective curves, each isomorphic to an open subvariety of the quotient of the upper half plane by a discrete subgroup of $\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{R})$. Fixing a prime $\ell$, we use this comparison to prove that the genus and the gonality of the components of $\mathrm{Q}_{(L,\mathcal{a}),\mathbb{C}}^{(\ell^{m})}$ grows with $m$, and hence that they have finitely many points over number fields of bounded degree. As an application, we furnish a new proof of a result by Cadoret--Charles, showing uniform boundedness of the $\ell$-primary torsion of Brauer groups of K3 surfaces over number fields varying in a $1$-dimensional lattice-polarized family.