from being fully understood. For example, in the 1980s Harer-Zagier
showed that the Euler characteristic of M_g (up to sign) grows
super-exponentially with g—yet most of this cohomology is not
explicitly known. In joint work with Galatius and Payne, we identify a
new source of rational cohomology in M_g in degree 4g-6, with
dimension growing exponentially in g, disproving a vanishing
conjecture of Kontsevich.
Link to poster [1]