arXiv research

Diagonalizes tautological classes of definite 4-manifolds.

Tautological classes, or generalised Miller-Morita-Mumford classes, are basic characteristic classes of smooth fibre bundles, and have recently been used to describe the rational cohomology of classifying spaces of diffeomorphism groups for several types of manifolds. We show that rationally tautological classes depend…

Strata of $k$-differentials on smooth curves parameterize sections of the $k$-th power of the canonical bundle with prescribed orders of zeros and poles. Define the tautological ring of the projectivized strata using the $κ$ and $ψ$ classes of moduli spaces of pointed smooth curves along with the tautological class $η$…

The paper studies tautological rings of strata of differentials, proving cohomological stability and no relations in specific degrees.

New operators in Khovanov-Rozansky homology exhibit symmetry.

Given a flexible $n$-gon with generic side lengths, the moduli space of its configurations in $\mathbb{R}^2$ as well as in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is a smooth manifold. It is equipped with $n$ \textit{tautological} line bundles whose definition is motivated by M. Kontsevich's tautological bundles over $\mathcal{M}_{0,n}$. We st…

The paper constructs cohomology classes on curve strata.

Researchers establish a connection between knot homology and Lie algebra actions.

Completed volumes match with combinatorial classes of the double ramification cycle.

The study explores tautological classes and their vanishing/nontriviality for manifolds with odd dimensions.

Study of tautological forms on curve moduli spaces.

For a Lie group G and a smooth manifold W, we study the difference between smooth actions of G on W and bundles over the classifying space of G with fiber W and structure group Diff(W). In particular, we exhibit smooth manifold bundles over BSU(2) that are not induced by an action. The main tool for reaching this goal …

The materials accompany a lecture short course presented at the 2011 Park City Mathematics Institute, Graduate Summer School on Moduli Spaces of Riemann Surfaces. The lectures were part of/coordinated with an overall program, including lectures by Ursula Hamenstadt on Teichmueller Theory, Andy Putman on Mapping Class a…

We introduce a space of stable meromorphic differentials with poles of prescribed orders and define its tautological cohomology ring. This space, just as the space of holomorphic differentials, is stratified according to the set of multiplicities of zeros of the differential. The main goal of this paper is to compute t…

Homology of abelian differentials stabilizes with more zeros.

We present a formula for the full Cheeger-Chern-Simons class of the tautological flat complex vector bundle of rank two over BSL(2,\C^δ). Our formula improves the formula by Dupont and Zickert, where the class is only computed modulo 2-torsion.

The paper defines and computes volumes of meromorphic differentials with simple poles.

Given an $n$-gon, the poset of all collections of pairwise non-crossing diagonals is isomorphic to the face poset of some convex polytope called \textit{associahedron}. We replace in this setting the $n$-gon (viewed as a disc with $n$ marked points on the boundary) with an arbitrary oriented surface with a number of la…

Paper connects volumes of moduli spaces of super Riemann surfaces to integrals over stable Riemann surfaces.

The paper proves properties of strata of differentials, showing they are affine and extremal.

We study the ring generated by the Chern classes of tautological line bundles on the moduli space of parabolic bundles of arbitrary rank on a Riemann surface. We show the Poincaré duals to these Chern classes have simple geometric representatives. We use this construction to show that the ring generated by these Chern …

This survey paper begins with the description of the duality between arc systems and ribbon graphs embedded in a punctured surface. Then we explain how to cellularize the moduli space of curves in two different ways: using Jenkins-Strebel differentials and using hyperbolic geometry. We also briefly discuss how these tw…

Twenty years ago, Mumford initiated the systematic study of the cohomology ring of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. Around the same time, Harer proved that the homology of the mapping class groups of oriented surfaces is independent of the genus in low degrees, increasing with the genus. The (co)homology of mapping c…

An Alexander self-dual complex gives rise to a compactification of $M_{0,n}$, called ASD compactification, which is a smooth algebraic variety. ASD compactifications include (but are not exhausted by) the polygon spaces, or the moduli spaces of flexible polygons. We present an explicit description of the Chow rings of …

Let $QF(S)$ be the quasifuchsian space of a closed surface $S$ of genus $g\geq 2$. We construct a new mapping class group invariant Kähler metric on $QF(S)$. It is an extension of the Weil-Petersson metric onthe Teichmüller space $\mathcal T(S)\subset QF(S)$. We also calculate its curvature and prove some negativity fo…

We discuss general notions of metrics and of Finsler structures which we call weak metrics and weak Finsler structures. Any convex domain carries a canonical weak Finsler structure, which we call its tautological weak Finsler structure. We compute distances in the tautological weak Finsler structure of a domain and we …

Constructs differential characters on nonlinear Graßmannians.

Surface bundles' signatures tied to their Euler characteristics.

We show that any degree at least $g$ polynomial in descendant or tautological classes vanishes on $M_{g,n}$ when $g\ge 2$. This generalizes a result of Looijenga and proves a version of Getzler's conjecture. The method we use is the study of the relative Gromov-Witten invariants of $P^1$ relative 2 points combined with…

We consider the space of smooth complex projective plane curves of degree d. Defined over this is the tautological family of plane curves, and hence there is a monodromy representation into the mapping class group of the fiber. We show two results concerning this monodromy group. First, we show that the presence of an …

Just as an explicit parameterisation of system dynamics by state, i.e., a choice of coordinates, can impede the identification of general structure, so it is too with an explicit parameterisation of system dynamics by control. However, such explicit and fixed parameterisation by control is commonplace in control theory…

Characteristic classes of oriented vector bundles can be identified with cohomology classes of the disjoint union of classifying spaces BSO_n of special orthogonal groups SO_n with n=0,1,... A characteristic class is stable if it extends to a cohomology class of a homotopy colimit BSO of classifying spaces BSO_n. Simil…

For $G$ a finite subgroup of ${\rm SL}(3,{\mathbb C})$ acting freely on ${\mathbb C}^3{\setminus} \{0\}$ a crepant resolution of the Calabi-Yau orbifold ${\mathbb C}^3\!/G$ always exists and has the geometry of an ALE non-compact manifold. We show that the tautological bundles on these crepant resolutions admit rigid H…

We construct a canonical correspondence from a wide class of reproducing kernels on infinite-dimensional Hermitian vector bundles to linear connections on these bundles. The linear connection in question is obtained through a pull-back operation involving the tautological universal bundle and the classifying morphism o…

New forms calibrate minimal graphs in arbitrary dimensions.

Let $Σ_g$ be a closed oriented surface of genus g and let $H_\mathbb{Q}$ denote $H_1(Σ_g;\mathbb{Q})$ which we understand to be the standard symplectic vector space over $\mathbb{Q}$ of dimension $2g$. We introduce a canonical metric on the space $(H_\mathbb{Q}^{\otimes 2k})^{\mathrm{Sp}}$ of symplectic invariant tenso…

Starting from the description of Segre forms as direct images of (powers of) the first Chern form of the (anti)tautological line bundle on the projectivized bundle of a holomorphic hermitian vector bundle, we derive a version of the pointwise Kobayashi-Lübke inequality.

We show how to define and count lattice points in the moduli space $\modm_{g,n}$ of genus g curves with n labeled points. This produces a polynomial with coefficients that include the Euler characteristic of the moduli space, and tautological intersection numbers on the compactified moduli space.

Study characteristic classes for manifold bundles, focusing on fiber families.

This paper discusses reformulations of the problem of coloring plane maps with four colors. We give a number of alternate ways to formulate the coloring problem including a tautological expansion similar to the Penrose Bracket, and an extension of the Penrose Bracket that counts colorings of arbitrary cubic graphs pres…

We show that a conjectural extension of a fixed point formula in Arakelov geometry implies results about a tautological subring in the arithmetic Chow ring of bases of abelian schemes. Among the results are an Arakelov version of the Hirzebruch proportionality principle and a formula for a critical power of $\hat c_1$ …

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…

On a convex body in a Euclidean space, we introduce a new variational formulation for its Funk metric, a Finsler metric compatible with the tautological Finsler structure of the convex body. We generalize the metric on Teichmuller spaces with the Weil-Petersson distance function. A set of similarities the resulting met…

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 genu…

A closed formula is obtained for the integral $\int_{\mathcal{\bar{H}}_g^1}κ_{1}ψ^{2g-2}$ of tautological classes over the locus of hyperelliptic Weierstraß points in the moduli space of curves. As a corollary, a relation between Hodge integrals is obtained. The calculation utilizes the homeomorphism between the moduli…

David Hilbert discovered in 1895 an important metric that is canonically associated to any convex domain $Ω$ in the Euclidean (or projective) space. This metric is known to be Finslerian, and the usual proof assumes a certain degree of smoothness of the boundary of $Ω$ and refers to a theorem by Busemann and Mayer that…

In the first part we extend the construction of the smooth normal-crossing divisors compactification of projectivized strata of abelian differentials given by Bainbridge, Chen, Gendron, Grushevsky and Moeller to the case of k-differentials. Since the generalized construction is closely related to the original one, we m…

We define and count lattice points in the moduli space of stable genus g curves with n labeled points. This extends a construction of the second author for the uncompactified moduli space. The enumeration produces polynomials with top degree coefficients tautological intersection numbers on the compactified moduli spac…