The Chow ring of the moduli space of curves of genus zero

Abstract

After recalling several constructions of the moduli space of curves of genus zero by different people we give our alternative construction of the moduli space. This gives a simple description of the intersection ring of this space. We give a basis for the Chow groups and an explicit duality between the Chow groups in complementary degrees. There is a recursive description of this algebra by S. Keel. Our presentation is simpler in the sense that there are fewer generators and fewer relations and our description is explicit.