Spin Hurwitz numbers count ramified covers of a spin surface, weighted by the size
of their automorphism group (like ordinary Hurwitz numbers), but signed
according
to the parity of the covering surface. These numbers were first defined by Eskin, Okounkov
and Pandharipande in order to study the moduli of holomorphic differentials on a
Riemann surface. They have also been related to Gromov–Witten invariants of complex
–folds
by work of Lee and Parker and work of Maulik and Pandharipande. In this paper, we
construct a (spin) TQFT which computes these numbers, and deduce a
formula for any genus in terms of the combinatorics of the Sergeev algebra,
generalizing the formula of Eskin, Okounkov and Pandharipande. During the
construction, we describe a procedure for averaging any TQFT over finite
covering spaces based on the finite path integrals of Freed, Hopkins, Lurie and
Teleman.
Keywords
spin Hurwitz numbers, topological quantum field theory
