The stable homology of Hurwitz modules and applications

Abstract

We show that the homology of modules for Hurwitz spaces stabilizes and compute its stable value. As one consequence, we compute the moments of Selmer groups in quadratic twist families of abelian varieties over suitably large function fields. As a second consequence, we deduce a version of Bhargava's conjecture, counting the number of $S_d$ degree $d$ extensions of $\mathbb F_q(t)$, for suitably large $q$. As a third consequence, we deduce that the homology of Hurwitz spaces associated to racks with a single component satisfy representation stability.