Semistable modifications of families of curves and compactified Jacobians

Abstract

Given a family of nodal curves, a semistable modification of it is another family made up of curves obtained by inserting chains of rational curves of any given length at certain nodes of certain curves of the original family. We give comparison theorems between torsion-free, rank-1 sheaves in the former family and invertible sheaves in the latter. We apply them to show that there are functorial isomorphisms between the compactifications of relative Jacobians of families of nodal curves constructed through Caporaso's approach and those constructed through Pandharipande's approach.