Compactified Picard stacks over the moduli stack of stable curves with marked points

Abstract

In this paper we give a construction of algebraic (Artin) stacks endowed with a modular map onto the moduli stack of n-pointed stable curves of genus g, for g greater than 2. These stacks are smooth, irreducible and have dimension 4g-3+n, yielding a geometrically meaningful compactification of the degree d universal Picard stack over the moduli stack of smooth curves with marked points.