Title: Compact moduli of singular curves
Description: We introduce a sequence of isolated curve singularities, the elliptic m -fold points, and an associated sequence of stability conditions, generalizing the usual definition of Deligne-Mumford stability. For every pair of integers 1 ≤ m ≤ n , we prove that the moduli problem of n -pointed m -stable curves of arithmetic genus one is representable by a proper, irreducible Deligne-Mumford stack [Special characters omitted.] ( m ). While the stacks [Special characters omitted.] ( m ) become singular for large m , they continue to possess many of the features that make the standard Deligne-Mumford compactification so tractable. In particular, we have (1) (Explicit Description of the Boundary) The boundary of [Special characters omitted.] ( m ) has a natural stratification in which each closed stratum is the product of lower-dimensional moduli spaces. (2) (Explicit Intersection Theory) There is a natural set of generators for the [Special characters omitted.] -Picard group of [Special characters omitted.] ( m ), the normalization of [Special characters omitted.] ( m ), namely [Special characters omitted.] Furthermore, we can evaluate the degree of these divisor classes on any 1-parameter family of m -stable curves.