English

Non-perturbative data for Weil-Petersson volumes and intersection numbers using ordinary differential equations

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-02-23 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

Recently, a new method was introduced for computing Vg,1(b)V_{g,1}(b), the Weil-Petersson volumes of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces of genus gg with one geodesic boundary of length bb, various supersymmetric generalizations of them, as well as analogous quantities in intersection theory. The physical setting is the computation of a certain one-point function in a variety of models of 2D gravity for which there is a double-scaled random matrix model (RMM) description. The method combines perturbative solutions of two ordinary differential equations (ODEs), the Gel'fand-Dikii resolvent equation, and the RMM's string equation. In this paper, we extend the method to extract non-perturbative information about the Vg,1(b)V_{g,1}(b) (and their analogues) that is naturally contained in the full ODEs, providing an efficient prescription for computing the transseries coefficients of the one-point correlation function, fully incorporating ZZ-brane and FZZT-brane effects, and for the first time, mixed ZZ-FZZT-effects. We use as a case study the (2,3) minimal string, computing perturbative and non-perturbative quantities, comparing them to perturbative results from topological recursion, and to results from the recent non-perturbative topological recursion framework. As a particularly powerful further application we provide general predictions for the large order in gg growth of Vg,1(b)V_{g,1}(b), and apply them to JT gravity, finding agreement with known results, and for analogous quantities in N=1{N} {=} 1 JT supergravity, proving a conjecture of Stanford and Witten. Our predictions yield new growth formulae for the cases of N=2{N} {=} 2 and N=4{N}{=}4 JT supergravity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.03351,
  title  = {Non-perturbative data for Weil-Petersson volumes and intersection numbers using ordinary differential equations},
  author = {Clifford V. Johnson and João Rodrigues},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.03351},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

51+29 pages (main paper+appendices+refs), 8 figures; v2: minor corrections/typos and some added references

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:53:17.202Z