Abstract. Let Y be a smooth, projective curve of genus g ≥ 1 over the complex numbers. Let H 0 d,A (Y ) be the Hurwitz space which parameterizes equivalence classes of coverings π : X → Y of degree d simply branched in n = 2e points, such that the monodromy group is S d and det(π * O X /O Y ) ∨ is isomorphic to a fixed line bundle A of degree e. We prove that, when d = 3, 4 or 5 and n is sufficiently large (precise bounds are given), the Hurwitz space In studying Hurwitz spaces when g(Y ) ≥ 1, it is natural to restrict ourselves to simple coverings of degree d whose monodromy group is S d . We denote the corresponding Hurwitz space by H 0 d,n (Y ). This is the principal case, since those with smaller monodromy group are reduced to coverings of smaller degree via ań etale covering of Y . There is a canonical morphismThe problem of unirationality may be posed for the fibers of this morphism. Given A ∈ P ic n 2 Y we denote the fiber overWe study the problem of irreducibility and unirationality/rationality of H is a rational variety. The proof of these results is based on the classification of the Gorenstein coverings of degree ≤ 5, by means of vector bundles over the base, due to Miranda, Casnati and Ekedahl [38], [14], [15]. The unirationality/rationality of the Hurwitz spaces is eventually a consequence of known results on unirationality/rationality of moduli spaces of vector bundles over curves with fixed determinants. Here is an outline of the content of the paper by sections.Section 1 contains some preliminaries on vector bundles. Section 2 is devoted to the explicit description of the Gorenstein coverings of degree d = 3, 4 or 5. We recall and complement some results from the papers [38], [14] and [15]. In the proofs of Theorem 0.1 and Theorem 0.2 we use certain statements about uniqueness of the representation of a Gorenstein covering by means of the vector bundle data on the base. When d = 5 this is related with a problem discussed in [13] p.457 Remark 2. Namely, given the Buchsbaum-Eisenbud resolution of a Gorenstein ideal of grade 3, to what extent is the skew-symmetric matrix of odd degree uniquely determined by the Pfaffian ideal? We focus mainly on the more difficult case d = 5 in this section and prove in Lemma 2.15, Lemma 2.16 and Proposition 2.19 the uniqueness statements we need. For reader's convenience we give in Proposition 2.5 a proof of the Buchsbaum-Eisenbud resolution as we use it.In Section 3 we construct families of coverings with rational parameter varieties, which eventually will dominate the Hurwitz spaces. Here the main result is Lemma 3.10.In Section 4 the proofs of Theorem 0.1 and Theorem 0.2 are given.In Appendix A we give a proof of a result due to Dolgachev and Libgober that we use. The reason of including this appendix is a comment in [49] p.337 regarding its validity. We give a detailed proof along the sketch in [17] p.9.
UNIRATIONALITY OF HURWITZ SPACES 3Notation. We assume the base field k = C, unless otherwise specified. A scheme is always supposed to be separated of finite t...