The main goal of this paper is to introduce a set of conjectures on the relations in the tautological rings. In particular, the framework gives an efficient algorithm to calculate all tautological equations using only finite dimensional linear algebra. Other applications are also indicated.

We prove that all monomials of κ-classes and ψ-classes are independent in $R^k(\ocM_{g,n})/R^k(\partial\ocM_{g,n})$ for all k≤[g/3]. We also give a simple argument for κ_l≠0 in $R^l(\ocM_g)$ for l≤g−2.

The aim of Part II is to explore the technique of invariance of tautological equations in the realm of Gromov--Witten theory. The main result is a proof of Invariance Theorem (Invariance Conjecture~1 in [14]), via the techniques from Gromov--Witten theory. It establishes some general inductive structure of the tautological rings, and provides a new tool to the study of this area.

For ordinary flops, the correspondence defined by the graph closure is shown to give equivalence of Chow motives and to preserve the Poincaré pairing. In the case of simple ordinary flops, this correspondence preserves the big quantum cohomology ring after an analytic continuation over the extended Kähler moduli space. For Mukai flops, it is shown that the birational map for the local models is deformation equivalent to isomorphisms. This implies that the birational map induces isomorphisms on the full quantum rings and all the quantum corrections attached to the extremal ray vanish.

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