We prove that every degree-g polynomial in the $ψ$-classes on $\overline{\mathcal M}_{g, n}$ can be expressed as a sum of tautological classes supported on the boundary with no $κ$-classes. Such equations, which we refer to as topological recursion relations, can be used to deduce universal equations for the Gromov-Witten invariants of any target.
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 prove a conjecture of Pixton, namely that his proposed formula for the double ramification cycle on Mbar_{g,n} vanishes in codimension beyond g. This yields a collection of tautological relations in the Chow ring of Mbar_{g,n}. We describe, furthermore, how these relations can be obtained from Pixton's 3-spin relations via localization on the moduli space of stable maps to an orbifold projective line.
Let $A=(a_1,\ldots,a_n)$ be a vector of integers with $d=\sum_{i=1}^n a_i$. By partial resolution of the classical Abel-Jacobi map, we construct a universal twisted double ramification cycle $\mathsf{DR}^{\mathsf{op}}_{g,A}$ as an operational Chow class on the Picard stack $\mathfrak{Pic}_{g,n,d}$ of $n$-pointed genus $g$ curves carrying a degree $d$ line bundle. The method of construction follows the log (and b-Chow) approach to the standard double ramification cycle with canonical twists on the moduli space of curves [arXiv:1707.02261, arXiv:1711.10341, arXiv:1708.04471]. Our main result is …
We use relations in the tautological ring of the moduli spaces $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ derived by Pandharipande, Pixton, and Zvonkine from the Givental formula for the $r$-spin Witten class in order to obtain some restrictions on the dimensions of the tautological rings of the open moduli spaces $\mathcal{M}_{g,n}$. In particular, we give a new proof for the result of Looijenga (for $n=1$) and Buryak et al. (for $n\geq 2$) that $\dim R^{g-1}(\mathcal{M}_{g,n}) \leq n$. We also give a new proof of the result of Looijenga (for $n=1$) and Ionel (for arbitrary $n\geq 1$) that $R^{i}(\mathca…
We define tautological relations for the moduli space of stable maps to a target variety. Using the double ramification cycle formula for target varieties of Janda-Pandharipande-Pixton-Zvonkine, we construct nontrivial tautological relations parallel to Pixton's double ramification cycle relations for the moduli of curves. Examples and applications are discussed.
Pandharipande-Pixton have used the geometry of the moduli space of stable quotients to produce relations between tautological Chow classes on the moduli space $M_g$ of smooth genus g curves. We study a natural extension of their methods to the boundary and more generally to Hassett's moduli spaces $\overline M_{g, w}$ of stable nodal curves with weighted marked points. Algebraic manipulation of these relations brings them into a Faber-Zagier type form. We show that they give Pixton's generalized FZ relations when all weights are one. As a special case, we give a formulation of FZ relations for…
We prove a new effective recursion formula for computing all intersection indices (integrals of $ψ$ classes) on the moduli space of curves, inducting only on the genus.
We present several recent developments on ELSV-type formulae and topological recursion concerning Chiodo classes and several kind of Hurwitz numbers. The main results appeared in D. Lewanski, A. Popolitov, S. Shadrin, D. Zvonkine, "Chiodo formulas for the r-th roots and topological recursion", Lett. Math. Phys. (2016).
We give an explicit solution of the ADHM recursion formula conjectured by Chuang, Diaconescu, and Pan. This solution is closely related to the formula for the Hodge polynomials of Higgs moduli spaces conjectured by Hausel and Rodriguez-Villegas. We solve also the twisted motivic ADHM recursion formula. As a byproduct we obtain a conjectural formula for the motives of twisted Higgs moduli spaces, which generalizes the conjecture of Hausel and Rodriguez-Villegas.
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 prove that a formula for the `pluricanonical' double ramification cycle proposed by Janda, Pandharipande, Pixton, Zvonkine, and the second-named author is in fact the class of a cycle constructed geometrically by the first-named author. Our proof proceeds by a detailed explicit analysis of the deformation theory of the double ramification cycle, both to first and to higher order.
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 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 …
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 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 analyze Chiodo's formulas for the Chern classes related to the r-th roots of the suitably twisted integer powers of the canonical class on the moduli space of curves. The intersection numbers of these classes with psi-classes are reproduced via the Chekhov-Eynard-Orantin topological recursion. As an application, we prove that the Johnson-Pandharipande-Tseng formula for the orbifold Hurwitz numbers is equivalent to the topological recursion for the orbifold Hurwitz numbers. In particular, this gives a new proof of the topological recursion for the orbifold Hurwitz numbers.
We present a topological recursion formula for calculating the intersection numbers defined on the moduli space of open Riemann surfaces. The spectral curve is $x = \frac{1}{2}y^2$, the same as spectral curve used to calculate intersection numbers for closed Riemann surfaces, but the formula itself is a variation of the usual Eynard-Orantin recursion. It looks like the recursion formula used for spectral curves of degree 3, and also includes features present in $β$-deformed models. The recursion formula suggests a conjectural refinement to the generating function that allows for distinguishing…
We derive a closed-form expression for all genus 1 Hurwitz numbers, and give a simple new graph-theoretic interpretation of Hurwitz numbers in genus 0 and 1. (Hurwitz numbers essentially count irreducible genus g covers of the sphere, with arbitrary specified branching over one point, simple branching over other specified points, and no other branching. The problem is equivalent to counting transitive factorisations of permutations into transpositions.) These results prove a conjecture of Goulden and Jackson, and extend results of Hurwitz and many others.
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.
The classical Hurwitz numbers which count coverings of a complex curve have an analog when the curve is endowed with a theta characteristic. These "spin Hurwitz numbers", recently studied by Eskin, Okounkov and Pandharipande, are interesting in their own right. By the authors' previous work, they are also related to the Gromov-Witten invariants of Kahler surfaces. We prove a recursive formula for spin Hurwitz numbers, which then gives the dimension zero GW invariants of Kahler surfaces with positive geometric genus. The proof uses a degeneration of spin curves, an invariant defined by the spec…
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.
We present a higher genus generalization of $bc$-Motzkin numbers, which are themselves a generalization of Catalan numbers, and we derive a recursive formula which can be used to calculate them. Further, we show that this leads to a topological recursion which is identical to the topological recursion that had previously been proved by Dumitrescu and Mulase for generalized Catalan numbers, and which is an example of the Eynard-Orantin topological recursion.
In this paper, we discuss the properties of the generating functions of spin Hurwitz numbers. In particular, for spin Hurwitz numbers with arbitrary ramification profiles, we construct the weighed sums which are given by Orlov's hypergeometric solutions of the 2-component BKP hierarchy. We derive the closed algebraic formulas for the correlation functions associated with these tau-functions, and under reasonable analytical assumptions we prove the loop equations (the blobbed topological recursion). Finally, we prove a version of topological recursion for the spin Hurwitz numbers with the spin …
We construct locally defined symplectic torus actions on ribbon graph complexes. Symplectic reduction techniques allow for a recursive formula for the symplectic volumes of these spaces. Taking the Laplace transform results in the Eynard-Orantin recursion formulas for the Airy curve x = y^2 / 2.
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 …
The Eynard-Orantin recursion formula provides an effective tool for certain enumeration problems in geometry. The formula requires a spectral curve and the recursion kernel. We present a uniform construction of the spectral curve and the recursion kernel from the unstable geometries of the original counting problem. We examine this construction using four concrete examples: Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants (or higher-genus analogue of the Catalan numbers), the intersection numbers of tautological cotangent classes on the moduli stack of stable pointed curves, single Hurwitz numbers, and the st…
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.
In this paper we present an example of a derivation of an ELSV-type formula using the methods of topological recursion. Namely, for orbifold Hurwitz numbers we give a new proof of the spectral curve topological recursion, in the sense of Chekhov, Eynard, and Orantin, where the main new step compared to the existing proofs is a direct combinatorial proof of their quasi-polynomiality. Spectral curve topological recursion leads to a formula for the orbifold Hurwitz numbers in terms of the intersection theory of the moduli space of curves, which, in this case, appears to coincide with a special ca…
We show that the Poincare polynomial associated with the orbifold cell decomposition of the moduli space of smooth algebraic curves with distinct marked points satisfies a topological recursion formula of the Eynard-Orantin type. The recursion uniquely determines the Poincare polynomials from the initial data. Our key discovery is that the Poincare polynomial is the Laplace transform of the number of Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants.
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.
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 …
Any topological recursion on a rational spectral curve is KP integrable
Center for Geometry and Physics, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)（基础科学研究院几何物理中心）；University of Haifa（海法大学）；HSE University（高等经济学院）；Skoltech（斯科尔科沃科学技术学院）；NRC “Kurchatov Institute” – ITEP（库尔恰托夫研究所国家研究中心-理论物理与实验物理研究所）；Igor Krichever Center for Advanced Studies, Skoltech（斯科尔科沃伊戈尔克里切弗高级研究中心）；Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学科特韦格-德弗里斯数学研究所）
For the hypergeometric spectral curve and its confluent degenerations (spectral curves of "hypergeometric type"), we obtain a simple formula expressing the topological recursion free energies as a sum over BPS states (degenerate spectral networks) for a corresponding quadratic differential $φ$. In doing so, we generalize Gaiotto-Moore-Neitzke's construction of BPS structures to include the case where $φ$ has simple poles or supports a degenerate ring domain. For the nine spectral curves of hypergeometric type, we provide a complete description of the corresponding BPS structures over a generic…
We propose a new approach to the topological recursion of Eynard-Orantin based on the notion of Airy structure, which we introduce in the paper. We explain why Airy structure is a more fundamental object than the one of the spectral curve. We explain how the concept of quantization of Airy structure leads naturally to the formulas of topological recursion as well as their generalizations. The notion of spectral curve is also considered in a more general framework of Poisson surfaces endowed with foliation. We explain how the deformation theory of spectral curves is related to Airy structures. …
We find a volume form on moduli space of double punctured Riemann surfaces whose integral satisfies the Painlevé I recursion relations of the genus expansion of the specific heat of 2D gravity. This allows us to express the asymptotic expansion of the specific heat as an integral on an infinite dimensional moduli space in the spirit of Friedan-Shenker approach. We outline a conjectural derivation of such recursion relations using the Duistermaat-Heckman theorem.
