We introduce a space of stable meromorphic differentials with poles of prescribed orders and define its tautological cohomology ring. This space, just as the space of holomorphic differentials, is stratified according to the set of multiplicities of zeros of the differential. The main goal of this paper is to compute the Poincar 'e-dual cohomology classes of all strata. We prove that all these classes are tautological and give an algorithm to compute them. In a second part of the paper we study the Picard group of the strata. We use the tools introduced in the first part to deduce several relations in these Picard groups.
We assume that @math . In the appendix of @cite_11 , Farkas and Pandharipande defined a class @math in @math (or @math ): this class is a weighted sum over the classes of irreducible components.
@cite_11
2244320003
We give a log-geometric description of the space of twisted canonical divisors constructed by Farkas--Pandharipande. In particular, we introduce the notion of a principal rubber @math -log-canonical divisor, and we study its moduli space. It is a proper Deligne--Mumford stack admitting a perfect obstruction theory whose virtual fundamental cycle is of dimension @math . In the so-called strictly meromorphic case with @math , the moduli space is of the expected dimension and the push-forward of its virtual fundamental cycle to the moduli space of stable curves equals the weighted fundamental class of the moduli space of twisted canonical divisors. Conjecturally, it yields a formula of Pixton generalizing the double ramification cycle in the moduli space of stable curves.