Virasoro constraints for target curves (Q811852)

In the paper under review, the authors study the relative Gromov-Witten theory when the targent is a smooth algebraic curve, and prove the strengthed Virasoro constraints for target curves. There are three main results. The first one (Theorem 2) gives a formula dealing with the descendents of the odd cohomology classes of the curve. The second (Theorem 3) proves the Virasoro constraints for the relative Gromov-Witten theory. The third (Theorem 4) verifies the Virasoro constraints which provide rules for removing the descendents of the odd cohomology classes. The main ideas are to use degeneration for the even theory, and to reduce the study of the odd theory of an arbitrary curve to the study of an elliptic curve relative to one point. Like other papers of the same authors, this one is very well written and organized. In sections 1--4, the authors consider the relative Gromov-Witten theory of a smooth algebraic curve \(X\) with only the descendents \(\tau_k(\gamma)\) of the even cohomology classes \(\gamma\), and prove the even Virasoro constraints for the relative Gromov-Witten theory of the target curve \(X\). In section 1, the Virasoro constraints for the even theory are studied by degeneration. The basic building blocks of the degeneration scheme are the cap, the tube and the pair of pants which may be viewed as \(\mathbb{P}^1\) relative to \(1\), \(2\) and \(3\) points respectively. In section 2, the theory of the cap is investigated by localization, while the theory of the tube arises in the vertex integrals of the localization formula for the cap. In section 3, the theory of the cap is expressed in terms of vacuum expectations of operators in the infinite wedge representation. In section 4, the Virasoro constraints for the cap are derived using the operator formalism. In section 5, the full relative theory of the curve \(X\) including the descendents \(\tau_k(\gamma)\) of the odd cohomology classes \(\gamma\) is discussed. The authors first reduce the odd theory to the study of an elliptic curve relative to one point. Several techniques including monodromy invariance and geometric vanishing relations are applied to determine the full elliptic theory in terms of the even theory. In section 6, the authors complete the proofs of the three main results (Theorems 2, 3 and 4) mentioned above.