Abelian surfaces with odd bilevel structure

The moduli space of abelian surfaces with polarisation of type (1,t) and a bilevel structure is of general type if t is odd and at least 17.Comment: 21 page

Fundamental groups of toroidal compactifications

We compute the fundamental group of a toroidal compactification of a Hermitian locally symmetric space $D/\Gamma$, without assuming either that $\Gamma$is neat or that it is arithmetic. We also give bounds for the first Betti number.Comment: Final version. Fixes error pointed out by M. Roessler, leading to slightly but significantly changed statements: improved notatio

On some lattice computations related to moduli problems

We show how to solve computationally a combinatorial problem about the possible number of roots orthogonal to a vector of given length in $E_8$. We show that the moduli space of K3 surfaces with polarisation of degree 2d is also of general type for d=52. This case was omitted from the earlier work of Gritsenko, Hulek and the second author. We also apply this method to some related problems. In Appendix A, V. Gritsenko shows how to arrive at the case d=52 and some others directly.Comment: With an appendix by V. Gritsenk

Abelianisation of orthogonal groups and the fundamental group of modular varieties

We study the commutator subgroup of integral orthogonal groups belonging to indefinite quadratic forms. We show that the index of this commutator is 2 for many groups that occur in the construction of moduli spaces in algebraic geometry, in particular the moduli of K3 surfaces. We give applications to modular forms and to computing the fundamental groups of some moduli spaces