Second flip in the Hassett–Keel program: existence of good moduli spaces

Abstract

We prove a general criterion for an algebraic stack to admit a good moduli space. This result may be considered as a generalization of the Keel–Mori theorem, which guarantees the existence of a coarse moduli space for a separated Deligne–Mumford stack. We apply this result to prove that the moduli stacks $\overline{{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})$ parameterizing $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$-stable curves introduced in [J. Alper et al., Second flip in the Hassett–Keel program: a local description, Compositio Math. 153 (2017), 1547–1583] admit good moduli spaces.