Symplectic sums and Gromov-Witten invariants

Gromov-Witten invariants of a symplectic manifold are a count of holomorphic curves. We describe a formula expressing the GW invariants of a symplectic sum $X# Y$ in terms of the relative GW invariants of $X$ and $Y$. This formula has several applications to enumerative geometry. As one application, we obtain new relations in the cohomology ring of the moduli space of complex structures on a genus g Riemann surface with n marked points.