Gromov–Witten theory of bicyclic pairs

A bicyclic pair is a smooth surface equipped with a pair of smooth divisors intersecting in two reduced points. Resolutions of self-nodal curves constitute an important special case. We investigate the logarithmic Gromov–Witten theory of bicyclic pairs. We establish correspondences with local Gromov–Witten theory and open Gromov–Witten theory in all genera, a correspondence with orbifold Gromov–Witten theory in genus zero, and correspondences between all-genus refined Gopakumar–Vafa invariants and refined quiver Donaldson–Thomas invariants. For self-nodal curves in <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="double-struck upper P left-parenthesis 1 comma 1 comma r right-parenthesis"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="double-struck">P</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mi>r</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">\mathbb {P}(1,1,r)</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> we obtain closed formulae for the genus zero invariants and relate these to the invariants of local curves. We also establish a conceptual relationship between invariants relative a self-nodal plane cubic and invariants relative a smooth plane cubic. The technical heart of the paper is a qualitatively new analysis of the degeneration formula for stable logarithmic maps, involving a tight intertwining of tropical and intersection-theoretic vanishing arguments.