Ramification of the moduli map for hyperplane sections of K3s and hypersurfaces

Abstract

Finiteness and injectivity of the moduli morphisms ${\mu }_n:|nH{|}_{\mathrm{sm}}\to {\mathcal{M}}_{g_n}$ associated with linear systems on K3 surfaces are understood in many cases. In this paper we study their ramification. Existing vanishing and stability results already imply unramifiedness when the polarisation or the multiple is sufficiently positive, so our focus is on low-degree phenomena. In particular, for a general K3 surface of degree $2$, we prove that the primitive moduli map is quasi-finite but ramified at exactly $171$ points, identified with the jumping lines of a logarithmic tangent bundle associated with the branch sextic. On the other hand, we prove that if $X\subset {\mathbb{P}}^n$ is a general hypersurface of degree at least $4$, then ${\mathrm{H}}^0(\mathrm{Y},{\mathrm{T}}_{\mathrm{X}}{|}_{\mathrm{Y}})=0$ for every smooth hyperplane section $Y$ of $X$. In particular, the moduli map for smooth hyperplane sections of a general quartic K3 surface is unramified. We moreover show that ramification does occur for higher multiples of the primitive polarisation on both degree-$2$ and degree-$4$ K3 surfaces, and relate the question to the stability of the tangent bundle.