Virtual volumes of strata of meromorphic differentials with simple poles

Abstract

We work over strata of meromorphic differentials with poles of order 1, and on affine subspaces defined by linear conditions on the residues. We propose a definition of the volume of these objects as the integral of a tautological class on the projectivization of the stratum. By previous work with Chen-M\"oller-Zagier, this definition agrees with the Masur-Veech volumes in the holomorphic case. We show that these algebraic constants can be computed by induction on the genus and number of singularities. Besides, for strata with a single zero, we prove that the generating series of these volumes is a solution of an integrable system associated with the PDE: $u_tu_{xx}=u_tu_x+u_t - 1$.