Stability in the homology of Deligne–Mumford compactifications

Using the theory of ${\mathbf {FS}} {^\mathrm {op}}$ modules, we study the asymptotic behavior of the homology of ${\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g,n}}$ , the Deligne–Mumford compactification of the moduli space of curves, for $n\gg 0$ . An ${\mathbf {FS}} {^\mathrm {op}}$ module is a contravariant functor from the category of finite sets and surjections to vector spaces. Via copies that glue on marked projective lines, we give the homology of ${\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g,n}}$ the structure of an ${\mathbf {FS}} {^\mathrm {op}}$ module and bound its degree of generation. As a consequence, we prove that the generating function $\sum _{n} \dim (H_i({\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g,n}})) t^n$ is rational, and its denominator has roots in the set $\{1, 1/2, \ldots, 1/p(g,i)\},$ where $p(g,i)$ is a polynomial of order $O(g^2 i^2)$ . We also obtain restrictions on the decomposition of the homology of ${\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g,n}}$ into irreducible $\mathbf {S}_n$ representations.