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Algebraic Geometry Seminar

Monday, December 16, 2024 - 3:30pm

Nadia Ott

University of South Denmark

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4N30

An essential ingredient in perturbative string theory is a certain measure on the moduli space Mg of curves. This measure is defined in terms of the Mumford isomorphism, which relates the canonical line bundle on Mg to the determinant of cohomology of the pushforward of the relative canonical line bundle on the universal curve. This pushforward, and thus also its determinant, has a natural hermitian metric given by integration. This metric can be expressed in terms of the period map. For superstring theory, this generalizes to a measure on the supermoduli space Mg. The super Mumford isomorphism relates the canonical bundle on Mg to the fifth power of the Berezinian of the pushforward of the relative canonical bundle on the universal supercurve. However, in the super case, there is no Hermitian metric given by integration. Instead, the metric is defined in terms of the period map. Furthermore, in contrast to the classical case, the super period map is non-holomorphic and develops a pole along the bad locus. Deligne recently proved that the supermeasure extends smoothly over the bad locus.
In joint work with Ron Donagi, we define a measure on Mg,0,2r, the supermoduli space with Ramond punctures, using the super Mumford isomorphism and super period map, adapted to the case of Ramond punctures. We show that in Mg,0,2r, the analogous bad locus has codimension 2 or higher for r > 1, allowing us to extend the measure using a Hartogs-like argument.

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