The rational cohomology ring of A_3, the moduli space of abelian 3-folds is computed. This is isomorphic to the the rational cohomology ring of the group Sp_3(Z) of 6x6 integral symplectic matrices. The main ingredients in the computation are (1) Looijenga's computation of the rational cohomology ring of M_3, the moduli space of smooth projective curves of genus 3, and (2) the stratified Morse theory of Goresky and MacPherson, which we use to compute the homology of the jacobian locus (in the rank 3 Siegel upper half plane), or equivalently of the extended Torelli group in genus 3.
In the revised version, we also compute the rational cohomology of the Satake compactification of A_3.
We describe the Chow rings of moduli spaces of ordered configurations of points on the projective line for arbitrary (sufficiently generic) stabilities. As an application, we exhibit such a moduli space admitting two small desingularizations with non-isomorphic cohomology rings.
A system of functional equations relating the Euler characteristics of moduli spaces of stable representations of quivers and the Euler characteristics of (Hilbert scheme-type) framed versions of quiver moduli is derived. This is applied to wall-crossing formulas for the Donaldson-Thomas type invariants of M. Kontsevich and Y. Soibelman, in particular confirming their integrality.
Framed quiver moduli parametrize stable pairs consisting of a quiver representation and a map to a fixed graded vector space. Geometric properties and explicit realizations of framed quiver moduli for quivers without oriented cycles are derived, with emphasis on their cohomology. Their use for quantum group constructions is discussed.
For any two degrees coprime to the rank, we construct a family of ring isomorphisms parameterized by GSp(2g) between the cohomology of the moduli spaces of stable Higgs bundles which preserve the perverse filtrations. As consequences, we prove two structural results concerning the cohomology of Higgs moduli which are predicted by the P=W conjecture in non-abelian Hodge theory: (1) Galois conjugation for character varieties preserves the perverse filtrations for the corresponding Higgs moduli spaces. (2) The restriction of the Hodge-Tate decomposition for a character variety to each piece of th…
For arbitrary reductive groups $G$ defined over a finite field, we decompose Newton strata in the special fiber of moduli spaces of global $G$-shtukas into a product of Rapoport-Zink spaces and Igusa varieties. This allows us to compare the $\ell$-adic cohomology of these spaces together with the various actions on them.
In this paper we compute the cohomology of moduli space of cubic fourfolds with ADE type singularities relying on Kirwan's blowup and Laza's GIT construction. More precisely, we obtain the Betti numbers of Kirwan's resolution of the moduli space. Furthermore, by applying decomposition theorem we obtain the Betti numbers of the intersection cohomology of Baily-Borel compactification of the moduli space.
We compute the rational cohomology of the moduli space of non-singular non-hyperelliptic complex projective curves of genus 3 with an odd theta characteristic.
Some recent progress towards understanding the cohomology of moduli spaces of curves is described. Madsen and Weiss have given a proof of a generalisation of Mumford's conjecture on the stable cohomology of these moduli spaces M_g, and other contributors have made advances related to Faber's conjectures on the tautological ring of M_g.
We prove that the moduli space of curves with level structures has an enormous amount of rational cohomology in its cohomological dimension. As an application, we prove that the coherent cohomological dimension of the moduli space of curves is at least g-2. Well known conjectures of Looijenga would imply that this is sharp.
We prove that the orbifold desingularization of the moduli space of stable maps of genus g = 1 recently constructed by Vakil and Zinger has vanishing rational cohomology groups in odd degree k < 10.
We compute the first, second, third, and fifth rational cohomology groups of the moduli space of stable n-pointed genus g curves, for all g and n, using (mostly) algebro-geometric techniques.
We compute the rational cohomology of the moduli space of trigonal curves of genus 5. We do this by considering their natural embedding in the first Hirzebruch surface and by using Gorinov-Vassiliev's method.
We investigate the (small) quantum cohomology ring of the moduli spaces of stable n-pointed curves of genus 0. In particular, we determine an explicit presentation in the case n=5 and we outline a computational approach to the case n=6.
We investigate low degree rational cohomology groups of smooth compactifications of moduli spaces of curves with level structures. In particular, we determine $H^k(\sgbar, \Q)$ for $g \ge 2$ and $k \le 3$, where $\sgbar$ denotes the moduli space of spin curves of genus $g$.
In this expository article we give a categorical definition of the integral cohomology ring of a stack. We show that for quotient stacks the categorical cohomology may be identified with equivariant cohomology. Via this identification we show that for Deligne-Mumford quotient stacks this cohomology is rationally isomorphic to the rational cohomology of the coarse moduli space. The theory is presented with a focus on the stacks of smooth and stable curves.
We explore the structure of the cohomology ring of the moduli space of stable 1-dimensional sheaves on $\mathbb{P}^2$ of any degree. We obtain a minimal set of tautological generators, which implies an optimal generation result for both the cohomology and the Chow ring of the moduli space. Our approach is through a geometric study of tautological relations.
We compute the rational Betti cohomology groups of the coarse moduli spaces of geometrically marked Del Pezzo surfaces of degree three and four as representations of the Weyl groups of the corresponding root systems. The proof uses a blend of methods from point counting over finite fields and techniques from arrangement complements.
We give a formula for the Eisenstein cohomology of local systems on the partial compactification of the moduli of principally polarized abelian varieties given by rank 1 degenerations. For genus 2 we give a formula for the full Eisenstein cohomology.
We compute cohomology of the moduli space of genus three curves with level two structure and some related spaces. In particular, we determine the cohomology groups of the moduli space of plane quartics with level two structure as representations of the symplectic group on a six dimensional vector space over the field of two elements. We also make the analogous computations for some related spaces such as moduli spaces of genus three curves with a marked points and strata of the moduli space of Abelian differentials of genus three.
Laumon moduli spaces are certain smooth closures of the moduli spaces of maps from the projective line to the flag variety of GL_n. We calculate the equivariant cohomology rings of the Laumon moduli spaces in terms of Gelfand-Tsetlin subalgebra of U(gl_n), and formulate a conjectural answer for the small quantum cohomology rings in terms of certain commutative shift of argument subalgebras of U(gl_n).
The main result of this paper is the statement that the Hodge theoretic Donaldson-Thomas invariant for a quiver with zero potential and a generic stability condition agrees with the compactly supported intersection cohomology of the closure of the stable locus inside the associated coarse moduli space of semistable quiver representations. In fact, we prove an even stronger result relating the Donaldson-Thomas "function" to the intersection complex. The proof of our main result relies on a relative version of the integrality conjecture in Donaldson-Thomas theory. This will be the topic of the s…
Let X be a compact connected Riemann surface of genus at least two. We compute the Chen--Ruan cohomology ring of the moduli space of stable PSL(2, C)--bundles of nontrivial second Stiefel--Whitney class over X.
In this paper, we study moduli spaces of representations of certain quivers with relations. For quivers without relations and other categories of homological dimension one, a lot of information is known about the cohomology of their moduli spaces of objects. On the other hand, categories of higher homological dimension remain more mysterious from this point of view, with few general methods. In this paper, we will see how some of the methods used to study quivers can be extended to work for representations of any (noncommutative) monomial algebra with relations of length two. In particular, we…
We study intersection cohomology of moduli spaces of semistable vector bundles on a complex algebraic surface. Our main result relates intersection Poincare polynomials of the moduli spaces to Donaldson-Thomas invariants of the surface. In support of this result, we compute explicitly intersection Poincare polynomials for sheaves with rank two and three on ruled surfaces.
We determine the action of the product of symmetric groups on the cohomology of certain moduli of weighted pointed rational curves. The moduli spaces that we study are of stable rational curves with m+n marked points where the first m marked points are distinct from all the others where as the last n may coincide among themselves. We give a recipe for calculating the equivariant Poincaré polynomials and list them for small m and n.
We study the moduli space of Higgs bundles on a compact Riemann surface. It was shown by Thaddeus and Hausel (in rank 2) and Markman (in general rank) that the rational cohomology ring of this space is generated by universal classes. In this paper, we use their results to compute the Hodge structure on the cohomology of this moduli space. We show that the natural Hodge structure on H^k is pure of weight k.
In this work we study the additive orbifold cohomology of the moduli stack of smooth genus g curves. We show that this problem reduces to investigating the rational cohomology of moduli spaces of cyclic covers of curves where the genus of the covering curve is g. Then we work out the case of genus g=3. Furthermore, we determine the part of the orbifold cohomology of the Deligne-Mumford compactification of the moduli space of genus 3 curves that comes from the Zariski closure of the inertia stack of M_3.
In this work we describe the Chen-Ruan cohomology of the moduli stacks of smooth and stable genus 2 pointed curves, and its algebraic counterpart: the stringy Chow ring. In the first half of the paper we compute the additive structure of the Chen-Ruan cohomology ring for the moduli stack of stable pointed genus 2 curves, describing it as a rationally graded vector space. In the second part we give generators for the even Chen--Ruan cohomology ring as an algebra on the ordinary cohomology.
We study the appearances of $\mathsf{LS}_{12}$ and $\mathsf{S}_{16}$ in the weight-graded compactly supported cohomology of moduli spaces of curves. As applications, we prove new nonvanishing results for the middle cohomology groups of $\mathcal{M}_9$ and $\mathcal{M}_{11}$ and give evidence to support the conjecture that the dimension fo $H^{2g + k}_c(\mathcal{M}_g)$ grows at least exponentially with $g$ for almost all $k$.
We compute the intersection Betti numbers of the GIT model of the moduli space of numerically polarized Enriques surfaces of degree 2. The strategy of the cohomological calculation relies on a general method developed by Kirwan to compute the cohomology of GIT quotients of projective varieties, based on the equivariantly perfect stratification of the unstable points studied by Hesselink and others and a partial resolution of singularities, called Kirwan blow-up.
We compute some Hodge and Betti numbers of the moduli space of stable rank $r$ degree $d$ vector bundles on a smooth projective curve. We do not assume $r$ and $d$ are coprime. In the process we equip the cohomology of an arbitrary algebraic stack with a functorial mixed Hodge structure. This Hodge structure is computed in the case of the moduli stack of rank $r$, degree $d$ vector bundles on a curve. Our methods also yield a formula for the Poincare polynomial of the moduli stack that is valid over any ground field.
We prove that the Poincare' polynomial of the moduli space of smooth genus 4 curves is 1+t^2+t^4+t^5. We show this by producing a stratification of the space, such that all strata are geometric quotients of complements of discriminants.
We prove that the rational cohomology $H^i(\mathcal{T}_g;\mathbf{Q})$ of the moduli space of trigonal curves of genus $g$ is independent of $g$ in degree $i<\lfloor g/4\rfloor.$ This makes possible to define the stable cohomology ring as $H^\bullet(\mathcal{T}_g;\mathbf{Q})$ for a sufficiently large $g.$ We also compute the stable cohomology ring, which turns out to be isomorphic to the tautological ring. This is done by studying the embedding of trigonal curves in Hirzebruch surfaces and using Gorinov-Vassiliev's method.
We explore several variations of the notion of purity for the action of Frobenius on schemes defined over finite fields. In particular, we study how these notions are preserved under certain natural operations like quotients for principal bundles and also geometric quotients for reductive group actions. We then apply these results to study the cohomology of quiver moduli. We prove that a natural stratification of the space of representations of a quiver with a fixed dimension vector is equivariantly perfect and from it deduce that each of the $l$-adic cohomology groups of the quiver moduli spa…
We give a recursive algorithm for computing the character of the cohomology of the moduli space $\Mmb_{0,n}$ of stable $n$-pointed genus zero curves as a representation of the symmetric group $\Sg_n$ on $n$ letters. Using the algorithm we can show a formula for the maximum length of this character. Our main tool is connected to the moduli spaces of weighted stable curves introduced by Hassett.
We give a combinatorial description of the rational cohomology of the moduli spaces of pointed genus 1 curves with $n$ marked points and level $N$ structures. More precisely, we explicitly describe the $E_2$ term of the Leray spectral sequence of the forgetful mapping $\EuScript{M}_{1,n}(N)\to\EuScript{M}_{1,1}(N)$ and show that the result is isomorphic to the rational cohomology of $\EuScript{M}_{1,n}(N)$ as a rational mixed Hodge structure equipped with an action of the symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$. The classical moduli space $\EuScript{M}_{1,n}$ is the particular case N=1.
Two decades ago, as part of their work of generic vanishing theorems, Green-Lazarsfeld showed that over a compact Kahler manifold $X$, the cohomology jump loci in the $Pic^τ(X)$ are all translates of subtori. In this paper, we generalize this result to higher dimensional vector bundles. It is showed by Nadel that locally the moduli space of vector bundles with vanishing chern classes is canonically isomorphic to a quadratic cone in the Zariski tangent space of a point. We prove that under the isomorphism, the cohomology jump loci are defined by linear equations.
Let M_g^n be the moduli space of Riemann surfaces of genus g with n labeled marked points. We prove that, for g \geq 2, the cohomology groups {H^i(M_g^n;Q)}_{n=1}^{\infty} form a sequence of Sn representations which is representation stable in the sense of Church-Farb [CF]. In particular this result applied to the trivial Sn representation implies rational "puncture homological stability" for the mapping class group Mod_g^n. We obtain representation stability for sequences {H^i(PMod^n(M);Q)}_{n=1}^{\infty}, where PMod^n(M) is the mapping class group of many connected manifolds M of dimension d…
We determine the quantum cohomology of the moduli space of odd degree rank two stable vector bundles over a Riemann surface $Σ$ of any genus. This work together with dg-ga/9710029 prove that this quantum cohomology is isomorphic to the instanton Floer cohomology of the three manifold $Σ\times S^1$. (Note: There is some overlap with the previous paper: alg-geom/9711013).
Methods of Harder and Narasimhan from the theory of moduli of vector bundles are applied to moduli of quiver representations. Using the Hall algebra approach to quantum groups, an analog of the Harder-Narasimhan recursion is constructed inside the quantized enveloping algebra of a Kac-Moody algebra. This leads to a canonical orthogonal system, the HN system, in this algebra. Using a resolution of the recursion, an explicit formula for the HN system is given. As an application, explicit formulas for Betti numbers of the cohomology of quiver moduli are derived, generalizing several results on th…
Let $\MC$ be the moduli space of stable holomorphic vector bundles of rank 2 and fixed determinant of odd degree, over a smooth projective curve $C$. This paper identifies the algebraic cohomology ring $\HA^*(\MC)$, i.e. the subring of the rational cohomology ring $H^*(\MC;\QQ)$ spanned by the fundamental classes of algebraic cycles, in terms of the algebraic cohomology ring of the Jacobian $\JC$.
The question of vanishing of the BV operator on the cohomology of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces is investigated. The BV structure, which comprises a BV operator and an antibracket, is identified, vanishing theorems are proven, and a counterexample is provided.
After a short exposition of the basic properties of the tautological ring of the moduli space of genus g Deligne-Mumford stable curves with n markings, we explain three methods of detecting non-tautological classes in cohomology. The first is via curve counting over finite fields. The second is by obtaining length bounds on the action of the symmetric group S_n on tautological classes. The third is via classical boundary geometry. Several new non-tautological classes are found.
The authors learnt that similar results have been independently found by D.Zagier, V.Baranovsky and V.Balaji/A.King/P.Newstead. The corresponding references have been added (and some typos corrected).
The main aim of this paper is to develop general algebraic and cohomological tools for the study of the local geometry of moduli and parameter spaces in Algebraic Geometry, culminating in the so-called Hitchin (or KZ) (projective) connection over the Moduli of curves and the proof of its flatness. Among other things, we notably give a 'modular' (i.e. in terms of the modular problem) construction of the differential operators- of any order- acting on (general)modular vector bundles, and in particular for the Lie algebra of vector fields on a (general) Moduli space, with its natural action on fu…
This paper is a companion of the paper "Weil's conjecture for function fields" by J. Lurie and the author. We present a different exposition of essentially the same algebro-geometric proof of the Atiyah-Bott for the cohomology of Bun(G), which subsequently leads to the proof of the Tamagawa number formula for the volume of the automorphic space for function fields.
We make cohomological computations related to the moduli space of genus three curves with symplectic level two structure by means of counting points over finite fields. In particular, we determine the cohomology groups of the quartic locus as representations of the symmetric group on seven elements.