Shifted Witten classes and topological recursion

Charbonnier, Séverin; Chidambaram, Nitin; Garcia-Failde, Elba; Giacchetto, Alessandro

doi:10.1090/tran/9046

Shifted Witten classes and topological recursion
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by Séverin Charbonnier, Nitin Kumar Chidambaram, Elba Garcia-Failde and Alessandro Giacchetto

Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (2024), 1069-1110

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1090/tran/9046

Published electronically: October 25, 2023

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Abstract:

The Witten $r$-spin class defines a non-semisimple cohomological field theory. Pandharipande, Pixton and Zvonkine studied two special shifts of the Witten class along two semisimple directions of the associated Dubrovin–Frobenius manifold using the Givental–Teleman reconstruction theorem. We show that the $R$-matrix and the translation of these two specific shifts can be constructed from the solutions of two differential equations that generalise the classical Airy differential equation. Using this, we prove that the descendant intersection theory of the shifted Witten classes satisfies topological recursion on two $1$-parameter families of spectral curves. By taking the limit as the parameter goes to zero, we prove that the descendant intersection theory of the Witten $r$-spin class can be computed by topological recursion on the $r$-Airy spectral curve. We finally show that this proof suffices to deduce Witten’s $r$-spin conjecture, already proved by Faber, Shadrin and Zvonkine, which claims that the generating series of $r$-spin intersection numbers is the tau function of the $r$-KdV hierarchy that satisfies the string equation.

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