The cycle classes of divisorial Maroni loci

Abstract

We determine the cycle classes of effective divisors in the compactified Hurwitz spaces of curves of genus g with a linear system of degree d that extend the Maroni divisors on the open Hurwitz space. Our approach uses Chern classes associated to a global-to-local evaluation map of a vector bundle over a generic $P^1$-bundle over the Hurwitz space.

35 pages; minor corrections; will appear in IMRN