On the effective cone of higher codimension cycles in $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$

Abstract

We exhibit infinitely many extremal effective codimension-$k$ cycles in $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$ in the cases $g\geq 3, n\geq g-1$ and $k=2$, $g\geq 2$, $k\leq n-g,g,$ and $g=1$, $k\leq n-2$. Hence in these cases the effective cone is not rational polyhedral.