Moduli spaces \(\mathcal M_{2,1}\) and \(\mathcal M_{3,1}\) (Q2430775)

In Kontsevich's famous proof of Witten's conjecture on 2-D gravity, he used a combinatorial structure associated to the moduli space of marked curves arising from ribbon graphs and Jenkins-Strebel differentials. The present paper uses this construction to define a simplicial complex associated to \(M_{g,1}\) for each \(g>0\), and subsequently a cell-structure on \(M_{g,1}\). For \(g=2\), a list of the highest-dimensional cells (there are eight of them) is given and their adjacencies are described. For \(g=3\), a similar result is obtained. Both cases are quite computational, although for \(g=2\) there is conceptual combinatorics/geometry, whereas for \(g=3\) the combinatorics become unwieldy and are verified using \texttt{MAPLE}.