On the effective cone of higher codimension cycles in \(\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n} \) (Q2182411)

Let \(\overline{\mathcal M}_{g,n}\) be the moduli space of stable genus \(g\) curves with \(n\) marked points. The study of the effective cone of divisors in \(\overline{\mathcal M}_{g,n}\) has played an important role in the last four decades for understanding the birational geometry of \(\overline{\mathcal M}_{g,n}\). In general, whether the effective cone of divisors is rational polyhedral indicates the complexity of the underlying variety. Some recent results show that the effective cone of divisors in \(\overline{\mathcal M}_{g,n}\) can fail to be rational polyhedral for a certain range of \(g\) and \(n\) [\textit{D. Chen} and \textit{I. Coskun}, Math. Ann. 359, No. 3--4, 891--908 (2014; Zbl 1307.14034); \textit{S. Mullane}, Adv. Math. 320, 500--519 (2017; Zbl 1386.14108)] and [\textit{A.-M. Castravet} et al., ``Blown-up toric surfaces with non-polyhedral effective cone'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2009.14298}]. In this paper the author focuses on the effective cone of higher codimension cycles in \(\overline{\mathcal M}_{g,n}\). The main result shows that the effective cone of codimension-\(k\) cycles in \(\overline{\mathcal M}_{g,n}\) is not rational polyhedral in the cases \(g\geq 3\), \(n\geq g-1\) and \(k=2\); \(g\geq 2\), \(k\leq \min(n-g, g)\); \(g=1\), \(k\leq n-2\). In order to obtain the result, the author constructs infinitely many extremal effective codimension-\(k\) cycles in these cases, by using the strata of meromorphic differentials on curves.