In this paper, we give a proof of Mirzakhani's recursion formula of Weil-Petersson volumes of moduli spaces of curves using the Witten-Kontsevich theorem. We also describe properties of intersections numbers involving higher degree $κ$ classes.
We define Strebel differentials for stable complex curves, prove the existence and uniqueness theorem that generalizes Strebel's theorem for smooth curves, prove that Strebel differentials form a continuous family over the moduli space of stable curves, and show how this construction can be applied to clarify a delicate point in Kontsevich's proof of Witten's conjecture.
The Virasoro operations in Witten's theory of two-dimensional topological gravity have a homotopy-theoretic interpretation as endomorphisms of an ordinary cohomology theory with coefficients in a localization of I. Schur's ring Δof Q-functions. The resulting theory has many of the features of a vertex operator algebra.
In this paper, we give a new genus-4 topological recursion relation for Gromov-Witten invariants of compact symplectic manifolds via Pixton's relations on the moduli space of curves. As an application, we prove Pixton's relations imply a known topological recursion relation on $\bar{\mathcal{M}}_{g,1}$ for genus $g\leq4$.
We state and prove a topological recursion relation that expresses any genus-g Gromov-Witten invariant of a projective manifold with at least a (3g-1)-st power of a cotangent line class in terms of invariants with fewer cotangent line classes. For projective spaces, we prove that these relations together with the Virasoro conditions are sufficient to calculate the full Gromov-Witten potential. This gives the first computationally feasible way to determine the higher genus Gromov-Witten invariants of projective spaces.
New relations among the genus-zero Gromov-Witten invariants of a complex projective manifold $X$ are exhibited. When the cohomology of $X$ is generated by divisor classes and classes ``with vanishing one-point invariants,'' the relations determine many-point invariants in terms of one-point invariants.
We study the quantum Witten-Kontsevich series introduced by Buryak, Dubrovin, Guéré and Rossi in \cite{buryak2016integrable} as the logarithm of a quantum tau function for the quantum KdV hierarchy. This series depends on a genus parameter $ε$ and a quantum parameter $\hbar$. When $\hbar=0$, this series restricts to the Witten-Kontsevich generating series for intersection numbers of psi classes on moduli spaces of stable curves. We establish a link between the $ε=0$ part of the quantum Witten-Kontsevich series and one-part double Hurwitz numbers. These numbers count the number non-equivalent h…
We give an Eynard-Orantin type topological recursion formula for the canonical Euclidean volume of the combinatorial moduli space of pointed smooth algebraic curves. The recursion comes from the edge removal operation on the space of ribbon graphs. As an application we obtain a new proof of the Kontsevich constants for the ratio of the Euclidean and the symplectic volumes of the moduli space of curves.
Using matrix model, Mironov and Morozov recently gave a formula which represents Kontsevich-Witten tau-function as a linear expansion of Schur Q-polynomials. In this paper, we will show directly that the Q-polynomial expansion in this formula satisfies the Virasoro constraints, and consequently obtain a proof of this formula without using matrix model. We also give a proof for Alexandrov's conjecture that Kontsevich-Witten tau-function is a hypergeometric tau-function of the BKP hierarchy after re-scaling.
In this letter,we present our conjecture on the connection between the Kontsevich--Witten and the Hurwitz tau-functions. The conjectural formula connects these two tau-functions by means of the $GL(\infty)$ group element. An important feature of this group element is its simplicity: this is a group element of the Virasoro subalgebra of $gl(\infty)$. If proved, this conjecture would allow to derive the Virasoro constraints for the Hurwitz tau-function, which remain unknown in spite of existence of several matrix model representations, as well as to give an integrable operator description of the…
We construct a countable number of differential operators $\hat{L}_n$ that annihilate a generating function for intersection numbers of $κ$ classes on $\Moduli_g$ (the $κ$-potential). This produces recursions among intersection numbers of $κ$ classes which determine all such numbers from a single initial condition. The starting point of the work is a combinatorial formula relating intersecion numbers of $ψ$ and $κ$ classes. Such a formula produces an exponential differential operator acting on the Gromov-Witten potential to produce the $κ$-potential; after restricting to a hyperplane, we have …
These are lecture notes of a C.I.M.E. course I gave at Cetraro, June 6-11 2005. The theory described is the version of Chen-Ruan's Gromov-Witten theory of orbifolds developed by Graber, Vistoli and me in the algebraic setting, but with introduction beginning in Kontsevich's formula on rational plane curves and through Gromov-Witten theory of algebraic manifolds. As this is not a joint paper, I finally get to give direct credit to Vistoli's beautiful ideas! In the appendix, I include, with permissions, two relevant letters Kontsevich wrote to Borisov in July 1996. People who study motivic integ…
We use Pixton's relations to prove a reconstruction theorem for genus 2 Gromov-Witten invariants in the style of Kontsevich-Manin (genus 0) and Getzler (genus 1). We also calculate genus 2 (descendant) Gromov-Witten invariants of $\mathbb{P}^2$ blown up at a finite number of points in general position.
In this paper we study effective recursion formulae for computing intersection numbers of mixed $ψ$ and $κ$ classes on moduli spaces of curves. By using the celebrated Witten-Kontsevich theorem, we generalize Mulase-Safnuk form of Mirzakhani's recursion and prove a recursion formula of higher Weil-Petersson volumes. We also present recursion formulae to compute intersection pairings in the tautological rings of moduli spaces of curves.
Using Gromov-Witten theory the numbers of complex plane rational curves of degree d through 3d-1 general given points can be computed recursively with Kontsevich's formula that follows from the so-called WDVV equations. In this paper we establish the same results entirely in the language of tropical geometry. In particular this shows how the concepts of moduli spaces of stable curves and maps, (evaluation and forgetful) morphisms, intersection multiplicities and their invariance under deformations can be carried over to the tropical world.
Let $X$ be a smooth projective surface and $D$ a smooth rational ample divisor in $X$. We prove an all-genus generalization of the genus $0$ WDVV equation for primary Gromov--Witten invariants of the local 3-fold $\mathcal{O}_X(-D)$. The proof relies on a correspondence between all-genus Gromov--Witten invariants and refined Donaldson--Thomas invariants of acyclic quivers. In particular, the corresponding BPS invariants are expressed in terms of Betti numbers of moduli spaces of quiver representations.
We consider an analogue of Kontsevich's matrix Airy function where the cubic potential $\mathrm{Tr}(Φ^3)$ is replaced by a quartic term $\mathrm{Tr}(Φ^4)$. Cumulants of the resulting measure are known to decompose into cycle types for which a recursive system of equations can be established. We develop a new, purely algebraic geometrical solution strategy for the two initial equations of the recursion, based on properties of Cauchy matrices. These structures led in subsequent work to the discovery that the quartic analogue of the Kontsevich model obeys blobbed topological recursion.
Kontsevich-Soibelman (2017) reformulated Eynard-Orantin topological recursion (2007) in terms of Airy structure which provides some geometrical insights into the relationship between the moduli space of curves and topological recursion. In this work, we investigate the analytical approach to this relationship using the Seiberg-Witten family of curves as the main example. In particular, we are going to show that the formula computing the Hitchin systems' Special Kahler's prepotential from the genus zero part of topological recursion as obtained by Baraglia-Huang (2017) can be generalized for a …
We generalize the First Reconstruction Theorem of Kontsevich and Manin in two respects. First, we allow the target space to be a Deligne-Mumford stack. Second, under some convergence assumptions, we show it suffices to check the hypothesis of $H^2$-generation not on the cohomology ring, but on an any quantum ring in the family given by small quantum cohomology.
The purpose of this paper is to give a twisted version of the Eynard-Orantin topological recursion by a 2D Topological Quantum Field Theory. We define a kernel for a 2D TQFT and use an algebraic definition for a topological recursion to define how to twist a standard topological recursion by a 2D TQFT. The A-model side enumerative problem consists of counting cell graphs where in addition vertices are decorated by elements in a Frobenius algebra, and which are a twisted version of the generalized Catalan numbers of Dumitrescu-Mulase-Safnuk-Sorkin. We show that the function which counts these d…
In this note, we use the method of [3] to give a simple proof of famous Witten conjecture. Combining the coefficients derived in our note and this method, we can derive more recursion formulas of Hodge integrals.
Floor diagrams are combinatorial objects which organize the count of tropical plane curves satisfying point conditions. In this paper we introduce Psi-floor diagrams which count tropical curves satisfying not only point conditions but also conditions given by Psi-classes (together with points). We then generalize our definition to relative Psi-floor diagrams and prove a Caporaso-Harris type formula for the corresponding numbers. This formula is shown to coincide with the classical Caporaso-Harris formula for relative plane descendant Gromov-Witten invariants. As a consequence, we can conclude …
We obtain a system of relations between linear Hodge integrals. As an application, we show that its first non-trivial relation implies the Witten's Conjecture/Kontsevich Theorem.
We give explicit formulas for the multipoint series of Gromov-Witten invariants of CP^1. We use the recursions of the Toda hierarchy to calculate these in degree 0, and the Toda equation and the degree 0 formulas to extend the calculation to higher degrees. We also obtain formulas for the Hodge series for the Hodge classes lambda_g and lambda_{g-1}.
We establish a polynomial recursion formula for linear Hodge integrals. It is obtained as the Laplace transform of the cut-and-join equation for the simple Hurwitz numbers. We show that the recursion recovers the Witten-Kontsevich theorem when restricted to the top degree terms, and also the combinatorial factor of the lambda_g formula as the lowest degree terms.
We propose a new proof, as well as a generalization of Mirzakhani's recursion for volumes of moduli spaces. We interpret those recursion relations in terms of expectation values in Kontsevich's integral, i.e. we relate them to a Ribbon graph decomposition of Riemann surfaces. We find a generalization of Mirzakhani's recursions to measures containing all higher Mumford's kappa classes, and not only kappa1 as in the Weil-Petersson case.
We prove two tropical gluing formulae for Gromov-Witten invariants of exploded manifolds, useful for calculating Gromov-Witten invariants of a symplectic manifold using a normal-crossing degeneration. The first formula generalizes the symplectic-sum formula for Gromov-Witten invariants. The second formula is stronger, and also generalizes Kontsevich and Manin's splitting and genus-reduction axioms. Both tropical gluing formulae have versions incorporating gravitational descendants.
Kontsevich's formula is a recursion that calculates the number of rational degree $d$ curves in $\mathbb{P}_{\mathbb{C}}^2$ passing through $3d-1$ general positioned points. Kontsevich proved it by considering curves that satisfy extra conditions besides the given point conditions. These crucial extra conditions are two line conditions and a condition called cross-ratio. This paper addresses the question whether there is a general Kontsevich's formula which holds for more than one cross-ratio. Using tropical geometry, we obtain such a recursive formula. For that we use a correspondence theorem…
In this ``experimental'' research, we use known topological recursion relations in genera-zero, -one, and -two to compute the n-point descendant Gromov-Witten invariants of P^1 for arbitrary degrees and low values of n. The results are consistent with the Virasoro conjecture and also lead to explicit computations of all Hodge integrals in these genera. We also derive new recursion relations for simple Hurwitz numbers similar to those of Graber and Pandharipande.
We prove a Givental type decomposition for partition functions that arise out of topological recursion applied to spectral curves. Copies of the Konstevich-Witten KdV tau function arise out of regular spectral curves and copies of the Brezin-Gross-Witten KdV tau function arise out of irregular spectral curves. We present the example of this decomposition for the matrix model with two hard edges and spectral curve $(x^2-4)y^2=1$
The paper is devoted to the open topological recursion relations in genus 1, which are partial differential equations that conjecturally control open Gromov-Witten invariants in genus 1. We find an explicit formula for any solution analogous to the Dijkgraaf-Witten formula for a descendent Gromov-Witten potential in genus 1. We then prove that at the approximation up to genus 1 the exponent of an open descendent potential satisfies a system of explicitly constructed linear evolutionary PDEs with one spatial variable.
Hurwitz numbers, which count certain covers of the projective line (or, equivalently, factorizations of permuations into transpositions), have been extensively studied for over a century. The Gromov-Witten potential F of a point, the generating series for Hodge integrals on the moduli space of curves, has been a central object of study in Gromov-Witten theory. We define a slightly enriched Gromov-Witten potential G (including integrals involving one "lambda-class"), and show that after a non-trivial change of variables, G=H in positive genus, where H is a generating series for Hurwitz numbers.…
In this paper, we give some new genus-3 universal equations for Gromov-Witten invariants of compact symplectic manifolds. These equations were obtained by studying new relations in the tautological ring of the moduli space of 2-pointed genus-3 stable curves. A byproduct of our search for genus-3 equations is a new genus-2 universal equation for Gromov-Witten invariants.
We identify the Givental formula for the ancestor formal Gromov-Witten potential with a version of the topological recursion procedure for a collection of isolated local germs of the spectral curve. As an application we prove a conjecture of Norbury and Scott on the reconstruction of the stationary sector of the Gromov-Witten potential of $\CP1$ via a particular spectral curve.
Faber's socle intersection numbers via Gromov--Witten theory of elliptic curve
Korteweg-de Vriesinstituut voor Wiskunde, Universiteit van Amsterdam(阿姆斯特丹大学柯蒂赫-德弗里斯数学研究所);Dipartimento di Matematica “Tullio Levi-Civita”, Università degli studi di Padova(帕多瓦大学图利奥·列维-奇维塔数学系)
It was pointed out by Eliashberg in his ICM 2006 plenary talk that the integrable systems of rational Gromov-Witten theory very naturally appear in the rich algebraic formalism of symplectic field theory (SFT). Carefully generalizing the definition of gravitational descendants from Gromov-Witten theory to SFT, one can assign to every contact manifold a Hamiltonian system with symmetries on SFT homology and the question of its integrability arises. While we have shown how the well-known string, dilaton and divisor equations translate from Gromov-Witten theory to SFT, the next step is to show ho…
Gross-Pandharipande-Siebert have shown that the 2-dimensional Kontsevich-Soibelman scattering diagrams compute certain genus zero log Gromov-Witten invariants of log Calabi-Yau surfaces. We show that the $q$-refined 2-dimensional Kontsevich-Soibelman scattering diagrams compute, after the change of variables $q=e^{i \hbar}$, generating series of certain higher genus log Gromov-Witten invariants of log Calabi-Yau surfaces. This result provides a mathematically rigorous realization of the physical derivation of the refined wall-crossing formula from topological string theory proposed by Cecotti-…
The main goal of the paper is to present a new approach via Hurwitz numbers to Kontsevich's combinatorial/matrix model for the intersection theory of the moduli space of curves. A secondary goal is to present an exposition of the circle of ideas involved: Hurwitz numbers, Gromov-Witten theory of the projective line, matrix integrals, and the theory of random trees. Further topics will be treated in a sequel.
We present in this paper a differential version of Mirzakhani's recursion relation for the Weil-Petersson volumes of the moduli spaces of bordered Riemann surfaces. We discover that the differential relation, which is equivalent to the original integral formula of Mirzakhani, is a Virasoro constraint condition on a generating function for these volumes. We also show that the generating function for psi and kappa_1 intersections on the moduli space of stable algebraic curves is a 1-parameter solution to the KdV hierarchy. It recovers the Witten-Kontsevich generating function when the parameter …
We give an overview of the proof for Mirzakhani's volume recursion for the Weil-Petersson volumes of the moduli spaces of genus $g$ hyperbolic surfaces with $n$ labeled geodesic boundary components, and her application of this recursion to Witten's conjecture and the study of simple geodesic length spectrum growth rates.
We identify the formulas of Buryak and Okounkov for the n-point functions of the intersection numbers of psi-classes on the moduli spaces of curves. This allows us to combine the earlier known results and this one into a principally new proof of the famous Witten conjecture / Kontsevich theorem, where the link between the intersection theory of the moduli spaces and integrable systems is established via the geometry of double ramification cycles.
In this paper, we give a new genus-3 topological recursion relation for Gromov-Witten invariants of compact symplectic manifolds. This formula also applies to intersection numbers on moduli spaces of spin curves. A by-product of the proof of this formula is a new relation in the tautological ring of the moduli space of 1-pointed genus-3 stable curves.
In Part 1 of this paper, we study gravitational descendents of Gromov-Witten invariants for general projective manifolds, applying the Behrend-Fantechi construction of the virtual fundamental classes. In Part 2, we calculate the topological recursion relations in genus 2. There are two of these, one for the second descendent of a field, and one for the first descendents of two fields. The proof uses the results of Part 1 together with a thorough study of intersection theory on the moduli space $\bar{M}_{2,2}$.
We present two explicit recursions which determine the elliptic Gromov-Witten invariants of CP^3 in terms of the rational ones, and give a table up to degree 5. Unlike the rational Gromov-Witten invariants, the coefficients are negative and fractional. In a further paper, we will prove that N^1_ab + (2n-1)N^0_ab/12 is the number of elliptic space curves through a generic lines and b generic points.
The generating series of the intersection numbers of the stable cohomology classes on moduli spaces of curves satisfies the string equation and a KdV hierarchy. Kontsevich's original proof of this result uses a matrix model and the matrix Airy equation. Witten then recasted Kontsevich's results in terms of Virasoro algebras, by means of an ingenious mixture of Feynman diagrams techniques and integrations by parts with some "rather formidable choice" of the integrands. In this note we show how Witten's formidable choices can be bartered for standard Feynman diagram manipulations, as soon as one…
We prove that the open Gromov-Witten invariants on K3 surfaces satisfy the Kontsevich-Soibelman wall-crossing formula. One one hand, this gives a geometric interpretation of the slab functions in Gross-Siebert program. On the other hands, the open Gromov-Witten invariants coincide with the weighted counting of tropical discs. This is an analog of the corresponding theorem on toric varieties \cite{M2}\cite{NS} but on compact Calabi-Yau surfaces.
In a recent paper, we obtained a WDVV-type relation for real genus 0 Gromov-Witten invariants with conjugate pairs of insertions; it specializes to a complete recursion in the case of odd-dimensional projective spaces. This note provides another, more complex-geometric, proof of the latter. The main part of this approach readily extends to real symplectic manifolds with empty real locus, but not to the general case.