Stacks of uniform cyclic covers of curves and their Picard groups

Abstract

We study the stack B_{h,g,n} of uniform cyclic covers of degree n between smooth curves of genus h and g and, for h >> g, present it as an open substack of a vector bundle over the universal Jacobian stack of M_g. We use this description to compute the integral Picard group of B_{h,g,n}, showing that it is generated by tautological classes of B_{h,g,n}.