The Schottky problem in genus five

Abstract

In this paper, we present a solution to the Schottky problem in the spirit of Schottky and Jung for genus five curves. To do so, we exploit natural incidence structures on the fibers of several maps to reduce all questions to statements about the Prym map for genus six curves. This allows us to find all components of the big Schottky locus and thus, to show that the small Schottky locus introduced by Donagi is irreducible.