Virtual moduli cycles and Gromov-Witten invariants of algebraic varieties (Q4383166)

The recent development of quantum cohomology in algebraic geometry is based on Gromov-Witten invariants. For the mathematical foundation of these invariants one needs to have a fundamental class of the Kontsevich moduli space of stable maps. If this moduli space does not have the expected dimension the usual fundamental class cannot be used. Instead, a virtual fundamental class should be constructed which is a cycle having correct dimension. In this paper, the authors develop an intersection theory on moduli spaces which meets the demands of Gromov-Witten theory. Their guiding principle is that the theory should be invariant under deformation of the underlying manifolds. The basic idea is to use locally the normal cone construction of Fulton and MacPherson. Technically, this idea is implemented using the tangent-obstruction complex, which is an interesting way of presenting deformation theory. To define a virtual fundamental class, a virtual normal cone is defined by patching local normal cones which are defined with the aid of the Kuranishi map of the moduli space. The virtual fundamental class constructed in this paper is applied to define the Gromov-Witten invariants of any genus for every smooth projective variety. These invariants are invariant under deformation and satisfy all the expected properties which are introduced by \textit{M. Kontsevich} and \textit{Yu. Manin} [Commun. Math. Phys. 164, No. 3, 525-562 (1994; Zbl 0853.14020)]. Virtual fundamental classes are also constructed by \textit{K. Behrend} and \textit{B. Fantechi} [Invent. Math. 128, No. 1, 45-88 (1997; Zbl 0909.14006)]. In symplectic geometry there exists a similarly general theory to define GW-invariants [\textit{Y. Ruan} and \textit{G. Tian}, ``Virtual moduli cycles and Gromov-Witten invariants of general symplectic manifolds'', preprint \texttt{alg-geom/9608032} (1996); \textit{B. Siebert}, ``Gromov-Witten invariants for general symplectic manifolds'', preprint \texttt{dg-ga/9608005} (1996)]. By recent work of B. Siebert and the authors of the paper under review the symplectic and algebraic invariants coincide in cases where both are defined.