ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Gromov–Witten invariant

Okay, let's imagine that you have a toy dinosaur in your hand.

Now, let's say you're trying to understand how many ways you can put a sticker on the dinosaur.

But, the catch is that you can't just put the sticker anywhere. You have to follow some rules about where the sticker can go on the dinosaur.

Well, this is kind of like what mathematicians are trying to do with the Gromov-Witten Invariant. Instead of a toy dinosaur, they're looking at shapes in space called manifolds.

They're interested in how many ways they can put lines (technically, curves) on these shapes. But, just like with the toy dinosaur, there are rules about where these lines can go.

For example, you can't just put a line anywhere on the manifold. It has to be in a certain spot, like on the surface of the shape.

The Gromov-Witten Invariant is basically a number that tells us how many different ways we can follow these rules to draw these lines on the manifold.

But, just like with the toy dinosaur sticker example, it can get pretty complicated. Mathematicians have to use a lot of advanced tools to analyze these shapes and the different ways that the lines can be drawn on them.

So, in summary, the Gromov-Witten Invariant is a fancy math concept that helps us count how many ways we can draw lines on a shape, but there are lots of rules and advanced tools involved to figure it out.