Algebraic Geometry Seminar

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Relations in the Tautological Ring of the Moduli Space of Curves

Speaker: Aaron Pixton, Harvard University

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 317

Date: Tuesday, October 1, 2013, 3:30 p.m.

Synopsis:

The tautological ring of the moduli space of smooth curves of genus g is the subring of its Chow ring generated by the kappa classes. The Faber-Zagier relations are an explicit algebraic description of a large number of relations in this ring, conjectured to span all the relations. I will discuss an extension of these relations to the moduli space of stable curves with marked points and explain how this gives a new perspective on the Faber-Zagier relations. Part of this talk presents joint work with R. Pandharipande and D. Zvonkine.