In this paper, we study fundamental groups of strata of the moduli space of quadratic differentials. We use certain properties of the Abel-Jacobi map, combined with local surgeries on quadratic differentials, to construct quotient groups of the fundamental groups for a particular family of strata.
The boundary of the multi-scale differential compactification of strata of abelian differentials admits an explicit combinatorial description. However, even for low-dimensional strata, the complexity of the boundary requires use of a computer. We give a description of the algorithms implemented in the SageMath package diffstrata to enumerate the boundary components and perform intersection theory on this space. In particular, the package can compute the Euler characteristic of strata using the methods developed by the same authors in [CMZ20].
For g>2 we study the cohomology classes in the closure of a stratum of abelian differentials defined by the boundary strata of codimension one. As an application, we find an explicit stratification of the spin moduli space for an odd spin structure consisting of g-1 strata D_j of codimension j-1 such that D_j does not contain a complete subvariety for all j. We also recover some results of Koroktin and Zograf and of Chen using a unified topological approach.
For $g\geq2$, $j=1,\dots,g$ and $n\geq g+j$ we exhibit infinitely many new rigid and extremal effective codimension $j$ cycles in $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ from the strata of quadratic differentials and projections of these strata under forgetful morphisms and show the same holds for $k$-differentials with $k\geq 3$ if the strata are irreducible. We compute the class of the divisors in the case of quadratic differentials which contain the first known examples of effective divisors on $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ with negative $ψ_i$ coefficients.
Gendron proved that the strata of holomorphic differentials with prescribed orders of zeros do not contain complete algebraic curves by applying the maximum modulus principle to saddle connections. Here we provide an alternative proof for this result by using positivity of divisor classes on moduli spaces of curves.
We state conjectures on the asymptotic behavior of the Masur-Veech volumes of strata in the moduli spaces of meromorphic quadratic differentials and on the asymptotics of their area Siegel-Veech constants as the genus tends to infinity.
In this paper we analyze the large genus asymptotics for intersection numbers between $ψ$-classes, also called correlators, on the moduli space of stable curves. Our proofs proceed through a combinatorial analysis of the recursive relations (Virasoro constraints) that uniquely determine these correlators, together with a comparison between the coefficients in these relations with the jump probabilities of a certain asymmetric simple random walk. As an application of this result, we provide the large genus limits for Masur-Veech volumes and area Siegel-Veech constants associated with principal …
We construct an algorithm for computing the cycle classes of the spin components of a stratum of differentials in the moduli space of stable curves $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$. In addition, we implement it within the Sage package admcycles. Our main strategy is to reconstruct these cycles by their restrictions to the boundary of $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ via clutching maps. These restrictions can be computed recursively by smaller dimensional spin classes and determine the original class via a certain system of linear equations. To study the spin parities on the boundary of a stratum o…
We study framed translation surfaces corresponding to meromorphic differentials on compact Riemann surfaces, for which a horizontal separatrix is marked for each pole or zero. Such geometric structures naturally appear when studying flat geometry surfaces "near" the Deligne-Mumford boundary.We compute the number of connected components of the corresponding strata, and give a simple topological invariant that distinguishes them. In particular we see that for $g>0$, there are at most two such components, except in the hyperelliptic case.
For $g \ge 5$, we give a complete classification of the connected components of strata of abelian differentials over Teichmüller space, establishing an analogue of Kontsevich and Zorich's classification of their components over moduli space. Building off of work of the first author (arXiv:1901.05482), we find that the non-hyperelliptic components are classified by an invariant known as an $r$-spin structure. This is accomplished by computing a certain monodromy group valued in the mapping class group. To do this, we determine explicit finite generating sets for all $r$-spin stabilizer subgroup…
We describe the closure of the strata of abelian differentials with prescribed type of zeros and poles, in the projectivized Hodge bundle over the Deligne-Mumford moduli space of stable curves with marked points. We provide an explicit characterization of pointed stable differentials in the boundary of the closure, both a complex analytic proof and a flat geometric proof for smoothing the boundary differentials, and numerous examples. The main new ingredient in our description is a global residue condition arising from a full order on the dual graph of a stable curve.
In general, it is difficult to measure distances in the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichmüller space. Here we consider the distance between strata in the Weil-Petersson completion of Teichmüller space of a surface of finite type. Wolpert showed that for strata whose closures do not intersect, there is a definite separation independent of the topology of the surface. We prove that the optimal value for this minimal separation is a constant $δ_{1,1}$ and show that it is realized exactly by strata whose nodes intersect once. We also give a nearly sharp estimate for $δ_{1,1}$ and give a lower bound …
A $k$-differential on a Riemann surface is a section of the $k$-th power of the canonical bundle. Loci of $k$-differentials with prescribed number and multiplicities of zeros and poles form a natural stratification for the moduli space of $k$-differentials. The classification of connected components of the strata of $k$-differentials was known for holomorphic differentials, meromorphic differentials and quadratic differentials with at worst simple poles by Kontsevich--Zorich, Boissy and Lanneau, respectively. Built on their work we develop new techniques to study connected components of the st…
