ON THE CONNECTEDNESS OF THE LOCUS OF REAL ELLIPTIC-HYPERELLIPTIC RIEMANN SURFACES

Abstract

A Riemann surface X of genus g > 2 is elliptic-hyperelliptic if it admits a conformal involution h such that the orbit space X/〈h〉 has genus one. This elliptic-hyperelliptic involution h is unique for g > 5 [1]. In a previous article [3], we established the non-connectedness of the subspace [Formula: see text] of real elliptic-hyperelliptic algebraic curves in the moduli space [Formula: see text] of Riemann surfaces of genus g, when g is even and > 5. In this paper we improve this result and give a complete answer to the connectedness problem of the space [Formula: see text] of real elliptic-hyperelliptic surfaces of genus > 5: we show that [Formula: see text] is connected if g is odd and has exactly two connected components if g is even; in both cases the closure [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] in the compactified moduli space [Formula: see text] is connected.