text: Using stable log maps, we introduce log twisted differentials extending the notion of abelian differentials to the Deligne-Mumford boundary of stable curves. The moduli stack of log twisted differentials provides a compactification of the strata of abelian differentials. The open strata can have up to three connected components, due to spin and hyperelliptic structures. We prove that the spin parity can be distinguished on the boundary of the log compactification. Moreover, combining the techniques of log geometry and admissible covers, we introduce log twisted hyperelliptic differentials, and prove that their moduli stack provides a toroidal compactification of the hyperelliptic loci in the open strata.
  @cite_31: The main goal of this work is to construct and study a reasonable compactification of the strata of the moduli space of Abelian differentials. This allows us to compute the Kodaira dimension of some strata of the moduli space of Abelian differentials. The main ingredients to study the compactifications of the strata are a version of the plumbing cylinder construction for differential forms and an extension of the parity of the connected components of the strata to the differentials on curves of compact type. We study in detail the compactifications of the hyperelliptic minimal strata and of the odd minimal stratum in genus three.
  @cite_25: The moduli space of canonical divisors (with prescribed zeros and poles) on nonsingular curves is not compact since the curve may degenerate. We define a proper moduli space of twisted canonical divisors in the moduli space of Deligne-Mumford stable pointed curves which includes the space of canonical divisors as an open subset. The theory leads to geometric combinatorial constraints on the closures of the moduli spaces of canonical divisors. In case the differentials have at least one pole (the strictly meromorphic case), the moduli spaces of twisted canonical divisors on genus g curves are of pure codimension g in the moduli spaces of stable pointed curves. In addition to the closure of the canonical divisors on nonsingular curves, the moduli spaces have virtual components. In the Appendix, a complete proposal relating the sum of the fundamental classes of all components (with intrinsic multiplicities) to a formula of Pixton is proposed. The result is a precise and explicit conjecture in the tautological ring for the weighted fundamental class of the moduli spaces of twisted canonical divisors. As a consequence of the conjecture, the classes of the closures of the moduli spaces of canonical divisors on nonsingular curves are determined (both in the holomorphic and meromorphic cases).
  @cite_22: We give an approach for relative and degenerate Gromov--Witten invariants, inspired by that of Jun Li but replacing predeformable maps by transversal maps to a twisted target. The main advantage is a significant simplification in the definition of the obstruction theory. We reprove in our language the degeneration formula, extending it to the orbifold case.
  @cite_11: We describe the closure of the strata of abelian differentials with prescribed type of zeros and poles, in the projectivized Hodge bundle over the Deligne-Mumford moduli space of stable curves with marked points. We provide an explicit characterization of pointed stable differentials in the boundary of the closure, both a complex analytic proof and a flat geometric proof for smoothing the boundary differentials, and numerous examples. The main new ingredient in our description is a global residue condition arising from a full order on the dual graph of a stable curve.
summary: There are several recent attempts to study degeneration of abelian differentials from the classical viewpoint without using log structures, i.e., compactifying the strata in the Hodge bundle over @math (resp. in @math ) using twisted differentials (resp. twisted canonical divisors). Gendron ( @cite_31 ) proved the smoothability of twisted differentials when they have zero residues at all nodes. The first author ( @cite_22 ) studied twisted canonical divisors on curves of pseudo-compact type. Farkas and Pandharipande ( @cite_25 ) studied systematically the space of twisted canonical divisors and showed that it is in general reducible, which contains, besides the closure of the stratum, a number of boundary components that have dimension one less than the dimension of the stratum. Finally in @cite_11 a crucial global residue condition was found and used to isolate the closure of the stratum. As mentioned before, the moduli space @math of log twisted differentials maps onto the Farkas-Pandharipande space of twisted canonical divisors, hence it also contains extra boundary components. Nevertheless, there is a way to implant the global residue condition under the log setting to isolate the main component, which will be addressed in our future work.