Alternate Compactifications of Hurwitz Spaces

We construct several modular compactifications of the Hurwitz space H(d,g,h) of genus g curves expressed as d-sheeted, simply branched covers of genus h curves. They are obtained by allowing the branch points of the cover to collide to a variable extent, generalizing the spaces of twisted admissible covers of Abramovich, Corti and Vistoli. The resulting spaces are very well-behaved if d is small or if relatively few collisions are allowed. In particular, for d = 2 and 3, they are always well-behaved. For d = 2, we recover the spaces of hyperelliptic curves of Fedorchuk. For d = 3, we obtain new birational models of the space of triple covers.