Joint IAS/Princeton University Symplectic Geometry Seminar

Witten conjectured a relationship between intersection theory on the moduli space of marked stable curves and the KdV integrable hierarchy. Alternatively, the KdV hierarchy can be rephrased in terms of a representation of half the Virasoro algebra. Witten’s conjectures were proved by Kontsevich. I will present analogous conjectures for moduli of Riemann surfaces with boundary. These conjectures have been proved in genus 0. This is joint work with R. Pandharipande and R. Tessler.