Derived supergeometry and perfect obstruction theories on algebraic superstacks

Abstract

We develop a deformation-theoretic framework for algebraic superstacks and apply it to the construction of perfect obstruction theories on moduli spaces of stable supermaps. In order to achieve this we employ the tools and concepts from derived algebraic geometry, extending them to the supergeometric setting. Our main technical contributions are (i) the notions of derived superstacks, (ii) their cotangent supercomplexes and (iii) perfect obstruction theories for algebraic superstacks. We prove that a quasi-smooth derived enhancement of an algebraic superstack always yields a perfect obstruction theory: this generalizes a well-known principle from classical deformation theory. We then turn to the case of the Deligne--Mumford superstack $\boldsymbol{\mathcal{M}}^{\mathsf{st-}\mathrm{SUSY}}_{g,\mathfrak{n}}(\boldsymbol{Y})$ of stable supermaps of fixed genus, homology class and numbers of Neveu--Schwarz and Ramond--Ramond punctures, with target a smooth projective superscheme $\boldsymbol{Y}$. We exhibit a natural derived enhancement $\mathbb{R} \boldsymbol{\mathcal{M}}^{\mathsf{st-}\mathrm{SUSY}}_{g,\mathfrak{n}}(\boldsymbol{Y})$ and compute its cotangent supercomplex; we prove that the induced obstruction theory on $\boldsymbol{\mathcal{M}}^{\mathsf{st-}\mathrm{SUSY}}_{g,\mathfrak{n}}(\boldsymbol{Y})$ is perfect. Finally, we compute its virtual dimension by super Grothendieck--Riemann--Roch. The resulting formula gives, in particular, a deformation-theoretic proof of the virtual dimension formula previously conjectured for stable supermaps and specializes to the usual virtual dimension of the classical moduli stack of stable maps.