Descendant Gromov-Witten invariants, simple Hurwitz numbers, and the Virasoro conjecture for \({\mathbb P}^1\) (Q5938766)

The author computes the descendant Gromov-Witten invariants -- gravitational correlators of \(\mathbb{P}^1\) in genera zero, one and two by using the topological recursion relations of Witten, Eguchi-Hori-Xiong and Getzler. By the approach of this paper it is shown that the known topological recursion relations allow one to compute all the Gromov-Witten invariants up to genus-2 and completely determine all the Hodge integrals for \(\mathbb{P}^1\) up to genus-2. Next, the author checks the Virasoro conjecture in gravitational quantum cohomology by explicitly showing that the gravitational correlators satisfy the Virasoro constraints. There are also derived the recursion relations of simple Hurwitz numbers, which count the number of inequivalent ramified coverings of a sphere by Riemann surfaces with specified branching conditions over an infinity. The author uses a computer program which computes up to 7-point invariants of arbitrary degree and presents some examples of computer calculations, as well as some open questions regarding the relation between the topological recursion relations and the Virasoro constraints.