2016 Theses Doctoral

Kuranishi atlases and genus zero Gromov-Witten invariants

Castellano, Robert

Kuranishi atlases were introduced by McDuff and Wehrheim as a means to build a virtual fundamental cycle on moduli spaces of J-holomorphic curves and resolve some of the challenges in this field. This thesis considers genus zero Gromov-Witten invariants on a general closed symplectic manifold. We complete the construction of these invariants using Kuranishi atlases. To do so, we show that Gromov-Witten moduli spaces admit a smooth enough Kuranishi atlas to define a virtual fundamental class in any virtual dimension. In the process, we prove a stronger gluing theorem. Once we have defined genus zero Gromov-Witten invariants, we show that they satisfy the Gromov-Witten axioms of Kontsevich and Manin, a series of main properties that these invariants are expected to satisfy. A key component of this is the introduction of the notion of a transverse subatlas, a useful tool for working with Kuranishi atlases.