A genus-3 topological recursion relation (Q852404)

In this article, the authors derive a new genus-3 universal topological recursion relation for the Gromov-Witten invariants of any compact symplectic manifold. Let \({\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{3,1}}\) denote the Deligne-Mumford moduli space of genus 3 curves with 1 marked point, and let \(\psi_1\) denote the first Chern class of the line bundle which associates to a smooth point on \({\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{3,1}}\) the cotangent line to the marked point on the curve. The key observation the authors make is that the class \(\psi_1^3\) can be written as a linear combination of products of the \(\psi\)-classes and the fundamental classes on the boundary strata of \({\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{3,1}}\). From this, the authors are able to write down the form of the genus-3 universal topological recursion relation with undetermined coefficients. The coefficients are then calculated by looking at the genus-3 Gromov-Witten invariants of a point and of \(\mathbb{P}^1\). As byproducts of the recursion relation, the authors also obtain a new relation in the tautological ring of \({\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{3,1}}\) and compute the 1-point genus-3 correlators in the theory of \(r\)-spin curves.