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Kenneth Ascher

Publications and source records attributed to Kenneth Ascher.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Chow and cohomology rings of moduli stacks of plane quartics

This paper studies the Chow and cohomology rings of the Hacking moduli stack $\mathcal{P}^{\mathrm{H}}$ of plane quartics. We construct a smooth proper Deligne--Mumford stack resolving the Calabi--Yau wall crossing between the KSBA and K-moduli compactifications for plane quartics via stack-theoretic weighted blowups. Its coarse moduli space is, up to normalization, the fiber product of the natural diagram relating the KSBA, K-moduli, and boundary polarized Calabi--Yau compactifications. From this, we compute the Poincar\'e polynomial of $\mathcal{P}^{\mathrm{H}}$, show that the cycle class map is an isomorphism with rational coefficients, and determine generators and relations for its Chow ring in terms of tautological classes. Analogous results are established for the GIT and K-moduli stacks.

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arXiv2025

Hassett--Keel Program in genus four

The Hassett--Keel program seeks to give a modular interpretation to the steps of the log minimal model program of $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_g$. The goal of this paper is to complete the Hassett--Keel program in genus four, supplementing earlier results of Casalaina-Martin--Jensen--Laza and Alper--Fedorchuk--Smyth--van der Wyck. The main tools we use are wall crossing for moduli spaces of pairs in the sense of K-stability and KSBA stability, and the recently constructed moduli spaces of boundary polarized Calabi--Yau surface pairs. We also give a construction of the hyperelliptic flip using a stackified Chow quotient which is expected to generalize to higher genus.

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arXiv2024

Boundedness results for families of non-canonically polarized projective varieties

We prove that, over a smooth quasi-projective curve, the set of non-isotrivial, smooth and projective families of polarized varieties with a fixed Hilbert polynomial and semi-ample canonical bundle is bounded. This extends the boundedness results of Arakelov, Parshin, and Kov\'acs--Lieblich beyond the canonically polarized case.

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arXiv2023

Moduli of boundary polarized Calabi-Yau pairs

We develop the moduli theory of boundary polarized CY pairs, which are slc Calabi-Yau pairs $(X,D)$ such that $D$ is ample. The motivation for studying this moduli problem is to construct a moduli space at the Calabi-Yau wall interpolating between certain K-moduli and KSBA moduli spaces. We prove that the moduli stack of boundary polarized CY pairs is S-complete, $\Theta$-reductive, and satisfies the existence part of the valuative criterion for properness, which are steps towards constructing a proper moduli space. A key obstacle in this theory is that the irreducible components of the moduli stack are not in general of finite type. Despite this issue, in the case of pairs $(X,D)$ where $X$ is a degeneration of $\mathbb{P}^2$, we construct a projective moduli space on which the Hodge line bundle is ample. As a consequence, we complete the proof of a conjecture of Prokhorov and Shokurov in relative dimension two.

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arXiv2021

Wall crossing for moduli of stable log pairs

We prove, under suitable conditions, that there exist wall-crossing and reduction morphisms for moduli spaces of stable log pairs in all dimensions as one varies the coefficients of the divisor.

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arXiv2021

K-stability and birational models of moduli of quartic K3 surfaces

We show that the K-moduli spaces of log Fano pairs $(\mathbb{P}^3, cS)$ where $S$ is a quartic surface interpolate between the GIT moduli space of quartic surfaces and the Baily-Borel compactification of moduli of quartic K3 surfaces as $c$ varies in the interval $(0,1)$. We completely describe the wall crossings of these K-moduli spaces. As the main application, we verify Laza-O'Grady's prediction on the Hassett-Keel-Looijenga program for quartic K3 surfaces. We also obtain the K-moduli compactification of quartic double solids, and classify all Gorenstein canonical Fano degenerations of $\mathbb{P}^3$.

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arXiv2021

Smoothability of relative stable maps to stacky curves

Using log geometry, we study smoothability of genus zero twisted stable maps to stacky curves relative to a collection of marked points. One application is to smoothing semi-log canonical fibered surfaces with marked singular fibers.

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arXiv2020

K-moduli of curves on a quadric surface and K3 surfaces

We show that the K-moduli spaces of log Fano pairs $(\mathbb{P}^1\times\mathbb{P}^1, cC)$ where $C$ is a $(4,4)$-curve and their wall crossings coincide with the VGIT quotients of $(2,4)$ complete intersection curves in $\mathbb{P}^3$. This, together with recent results by Laza-O'Grady, implies that these K-moduli spaces form a natural interpolation between the GIT moduli space of $(4,4)$-curves on $\mathbb{P}^1\times\mathbb{P}^1$ and the Baily-Borel compactification of moduli of quartic hyperelliptic K3 surfaces.

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arXiv2020

Hyperbolicity of varieties of log general type

These notes provide an overview of various notions of hyperbolicity for varieties of log general type from the viewpoint of both arithmetic and birational geometry. The main results are based on our paper entitled "Hyperbolicity and uniformity of varieties of log general type." They are expanded notes from a minicourse the authors gave as part of the Geometry and arithmetic of orbifolds workshop at UQ\'AM.

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arXiv2019

Moduli of double covers and degree one del Pezzo surfaces

Given a degree one del Pezzo surface with canonical singularities, the linear series generated by twice the anti-canonical divisor exhibits the surface as the double cover of the quadric cone branched along a sextic curve. It is natural to ask if this description extends to the boundary of a compactification of the moduli space of degree one del Pezzo surfaces. The goal of this paper is to show that this is indeed the case. In particular, we give an explicit classification of the boundary of the moduli space of anti-canonically polarized broken del Pezzo surfaces of degree one as double covers of degenerations of the quadric cone.

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arXiv2019

Wall crossing for K-moduli spaces of plane curves

We construct proper good moduli spaces parametrizing K-polystable $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein smoothable log Fano pairs $(X, cD)$, where $X$ is a Fano variety and $D$ is a rational multiple of the anti-canonical divisor. We then establish a wall-crossing framework of these K-moduli spaces as $c$ varies. The main application in this paper is the case of plane curves of degree $d \geq 4$ as boundary divisors of $\mathbb{P}^2$. In this case, we show that when the coefficient $c$ is small, the K-moduli space of these pairs is isomorphic to the GIT moduli space. We then show that the first wall crossing of these K-moduli spaces are weighted blow-ups of Kirwan type. We also describe all wall crossings for degree 4,5,6, and relate the final K-moduli spaces to Hacking's compactification and the moduli of K3 surfaces.

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arXiv2019

Compact moduli of elliptic K3 surfaces

We construct various modular compactifications of the space of elliptic K3 surfaces using tools from the minimal model program, and explicitly describe the surfaces parametrized by their boundaries. The coarse spaces of our constructed compactifications admit morphisms to the Satake-Baily-Borel compactification. Finally, we show that one of our spaces is smooth with coarse space the GIT quotient of pairs of Weierstrass K3 surfaces with a chosen fiber.

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arXiv2019

The Erd\H{o}s-Ulam problem, Lang's conjecture, and uniformity

A rational distance set is a subset of the plane such that the distance between any two points is a rational number. We show, assuming Lang's Conjecture, that the cardinalities of rational distance sets in general position are uniformly bounded, generalizing results of Solymosi-de Zeeuw, Makhul-Shaffaf, Shaffaf, and Tao. In the process, we give a criterion for certain varieties with non-canonical singularities to be of general type.

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arXiv2018

Hyperbolicity and uniformity of varieties of log general type

Projective varieties with ample cotangent bundle satisfy many notions of hyperbolicity, and one goal of this paper is to discuss generalizations to quasi-projective varieties. A major hurdle is that the naive generalization fails, i.e. the log cotangent bundle is never ample. Instead, we define a notion called almost ample which roughly asks that the log cotangent is as positive as possible. We show that all subvarieties of a quasi-projective variety with almost ample log cotangent bundle are of log general type. In addition, if one assumes globally generated then we obtain that such varieties contain finitely many integral points. In another direction, we show that the Lang-Vojta conjecture implies the number of stably integral points on curves of log general type, and surfaces of log general type with almost ample log cotangent sheaf are uniformly bounded.

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arXiv2018

Moduli of weighted stable elliptic surfaces and invariance of log plurigenera

This is the third paper in a series of work on weighted stable elliptic surfaces - elliptic fibrations with section and marked fibers weighted between zero and one. Motivated by Hassett's weighted pointed stable curves, we use the log minimal model program to construct compact moduli spaces parameterizing these objects. Moreoever, we show that the domain of weights admits a wall and chamber structure, we describe the induced wall crossing morphisms on the moduli spaces as the weight vector varies, and describe the surfaces that appear on the boundary of the moduli space. The main technical result is a proof of invariance of log plurigenera for slc elliptic surface pairs with arbitrary weights.

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arXiv2018

Enumerating Hassett's wall and chamber decomposition of the moduli space of weighted stable curves

Hassett constructed a class of modular compactifications of the moduli space of pointed curves by adding weights to the marked points. This leads to a natural wall and chamber decomposition of the domain of admissible weights where the moduli space and universal family remain constant inside a chamber, and may change upon crossing a wall. The goal of this paper is to count the number of chambers in this decomposition. We relate these chambers to a class of boolean functions known as linear threshold functions (LTFs), and discover a subclass of LTFs which are in bijection with the chambers. Using this relation, we prove an asymptotic formula for the number of chambers, and compute the exact number of chambers for moduli spaces of weighted stable curves with at most 9 points. In addition, we provide an algorithm for the enumeration of the chambers and prove results in computational complexity.

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