The purpose of this short article is to prove a product formula relating the log Gromov-Witten invariants of V×W with those of V and W in the case the log structure on V is trivial.

We realize the moduli spaces of cubic fourfolds with specified group actions as arithmetic quotients of complex hyperbolic balls or type IV symmetric domains, and study their compactifications. We prove the geometric (GIT) compactifications are naturally isomorphic to the Hodge theoretic (Looijenga, in many cases Baily–Borel) compactifications. The key ingredients of the proof are the global Torelli theorem by Voisin, the characterization of the image of the period map given by Looijenga and Laza independently, and the functoriality of Looijenga compactifications proved in the Appendix.

We show that the generating functions of Gromov--Witten invariants with ancestors are invariant under a simple flop, for all genera, after an analytic continuation in the extended Kähler moduli space. This is a sequel to [LLW].

This an expository article on Givental's axiomatic Gromov--Witten theory and some of its applications.

1. INDEX THEORY, ELLIPTIC CURVES AND LOOP GROUPS One can look at elliptic genus from several different points of view; from index theory, from representation theory of Kac-Moody affine Lie algebras or from the theory of elliptic functions and modular forms. Each of them shows us some quite different interesting features of ellitic genus. On the other hand we can also combine the forces of these three different mathematical fields to derive many interesting results in topology such as rigidity, divisibility and vanishing of topological invariants..