The Picard group of the universal moduli space of vector bundles on stable curves

Abstract: We construct the moduli stack of properly balanced vector bundles on semistable curves and we determine explicitly its Picard group. As a consequence, we obtain an explicit description of the Picard groups of the universal moduli stack of vector bundles on smooth curves and of the Schmitt's compactification over the stack of stable curves. We prove some results about the gerbe structure of the universal moduli stack over its rigidification by the natural action of the multiplicative group. In particular, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Poincar\'e bundles over the universal curve of an open substack of the rigidification, generalizing a result of Mestrano-Ramanan.