Geometry of the intersection ring and vanishing relations in the cohomology of the moduli space of parabolic bundles on a curve

Abstract: We study the ring generated by the Chern classes of tautological line bundles on the moduli space of parabolic bundles of arbitrary rank on a Riemann surface. We show the Poincar\'e duals to these Chern classes have simple geometric representatives. We use this construction to show that the ring generated by these Chern classes vanishes below the dimension of the moduli space, in analogy with the Newstead-Ramanan conjecture for stable bundles.