arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Renzo Cavalieri.
Hurwitz numbers count genus g, degree d covers of the projective line with fixed branch locus. This equals the degree of a natural branch map defined on the Hurwitz space. In tropical geometry, algebraic curves are replaced by certain piece-wise linear objects called tropical curves. This paper develops a tropical counterpart of the branch map and shows that its degree recovers classical Hurwitz numbers.
Double Hurwitz numbers count covers of the projective line by genus g curves with assigned ramification profiles over 0 and infinity, and simple ramification over a fixed branch divisor. Goulden, Jackson and Vakil have shown double Hurwitz numbers are piecewise polynomial in the orders of ramification, and Shadrin, Shapiro and Vainshtein have determined the chamber structure and wall crossing formulas for g=0. This paper gives a unified approach to these results and strengthens them in several ways --- the most important being the extension of the results of Shapiro, Shadrin and Vainshtein to arbitrary genus. The main tool is the authors' previous work expressing double Hurwitz number as a sum over certain labeled graphs. We identify the labels of the graphs with lattice points in the chambers of certain hyperplane arrangements, which are well known to give rise to piecewise polynomial functions. Our understanding of the wall crossing for these functions builds on the work of Varchenko, and could have broader applications.
We study the relation among the genus 0 Gromov-Witten theories of the three spaces $\mathcal{X}\leftarrow\mathcal{Z}\leftarrow Y$, where $\mathcal{X}=[\c^2/\z_3]$, $\mathcal{Z}$ is obtained by a weighted blowup at the stacky point of $\mathcal{X}$, and $Y$ is the crepant resolution of the $A_2$ singularity. We formulate and verify a statement similar to the Crepant Resolution Conjecture of Bryan and Graber.b
We study Hodge Integrals on Moduli Spaces of Admissible Covers. Motivation for this work comes from Bryan and Pandharipande's recent work on the local GW theory of curves, where analogouos intersection numbers, computed on Moduli Spaces of Relative Stable Maps, are the structure coefficients for a Topological Quantum Field Theory. Admissible Covers provide an alternative compactification of the Moduli Space of Maps, that is smooth and doesn't contain boundary components of excessive dimension. A parallel, yet different, TQFT, can then be constructed. In this paper we compute, using localization, the relevant Hodge integrals for admissible covers of a pointed sphere of degree 2 and 3, and formulate a conjecture for general degree. In genus 0, we recover the well-known Aspinwall Morrison formula in GW theory.
We discuss analogs of Faber's conjecture for two nested sequences of partial compactifications of the moduli space of smooth curves. We show that their tautological rings are one-dimensional in top degree but do not satisfy Poincare duality.
This paper wishes to foster communication between mathematicians and physicists working in mirror symmetry and orbifold Gromov-Witten theory. We provide a reader friendly review of the physics computation in [arXiv:hep-th/0607100] that predicts Gromov-Witten invariants of [C^3/Z_3] in arbitrary genus, and of the mathematical framework for expressing these invariants as Hodge integrals. Using geometric properties of the Hodge classes, we compute the unpointed invariants for g=2,3, thus providing the first high genus mathematical check of the physics predictions.
We exhibit a set of recursive relations that completely determine all equivariant Gromov-Witten invariants of the quotient orbifold C^3/Z_3. We interpret such invariants as G-Hodge Integrals, and produce relations among them via Atiyah-Bott localization on moduli spaces of twisted stable maps to gerbes over the projective line.
Hurwitz numbers count ramified covers of a Riemann surface with prescribed monodromy. As such, they are purely combinatorial objects. Tautological classes, on the other hand, are distinguished classes in the intersection ring of the moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces of a given genus, and are thus ``geometric.'' Localization computations in Gromov-Witten theory provide non-obvious relations between the two. This paper makes one such computation, and shows how it leads to a ``master'' relation (Theorem 0.1) that reduces the ratios of certain interesting tautological classes to the pure combinatorics of Hurwitz numbers. As a corollary, we obtain a purely combinatorial proof of a theorem of Bryan and Pandharipande, expressing in generating function form classical computations by Faber/Looijenga (Theorem 0.2).
In this paper we describe explicit generating functions for a large class of Hurwitz-Hodge integrals. These are integrals of tautological classes on moduli spaces of admissible covers, a (stackily) smooth compactification of the Hurwitz schemes. Admissible covers and their tautological classes are interesting mathematical objects on their own, but recently they have proved to be a useful tool for the study of the tautological ring of the moduli space of curves, and the orbifold Gromov-Witten theory of DM stacks. Our main tool is Atiyah-Bott localization: its underlying philosophy is to translate an interesting geometric problem into a purely combinatorial one.
This paper is an elementary introduction to the theory of moduli spaces of curves and maps. As an application to enumerative geometry, we show how to count the number of bitangent lines to a projective plane curve of degree $d$ by doing intersection theory on moduli spaces.
We construct a two-level weighted TQFT whose structure coefficents are equivariant intersection numbers on moduli spaces of admissible covers. Such a structure is parallel (and strictly related) to the local Gromov-Witten theory of curves of Bryan-Pandharipande. We compute explicitly the theory using techniques of localization on moduli spaces of admissible covers of a parametrized projective line. The Frobenius Algebras we obtain are one parameter deformations of the class algebra of the symmetric group S_d. In certain special cases we are able to produce explicit closed formulas for such deformations in terms of the representation theory of S_d.