No Arabic abstract
A graded quiver with superpotential is a quiver whose arrows are assigned degrees $cin {0, 1, cdots, m}$, for some integer $m geq 0$, with relations generated by a superpotential of degree $m-1$. Ordinary quivers ($m=1)$ often describe the open string sector of D-brane systems; in particular, they capture the physics of D3-branes at local Calabi-Yau (CY) 3-fold singularities in type IIB string theory, in the guise of 4d $mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric quiver gauge theories. It was pointed out recently that graded quivers with $m=2$ and $m=3$ similarly describe systems of D-branes at CY 4-fold and 5-fold singularities, as 2d $mathcal{N}=(0,2)$ and 0d $mathcal{N}=1$ gauge theories, respectively. In this work, we further explore the correspondence between $m$-graded quivers with superpotential, $Q_{(m)}$, and CY $(m+2)$-fold singularities, ${mathbf X}_{m+2}$. For any $m$, the open string sector of the topological B-model on ${mathbf X}_{m+2}$ can be described in terms of a graded quiver. We illustrate this correspondence explicitly with a few infinite families of toric singularities indexed by $m in mathbb{N}$, for which we derive toric graded quivers associated to the geometry, using several complementary perspectives. Many interesting aspects of supersymmetric quiver gauge theories can be formally extended to any $m$; for instance, for one family of singularities, dubbed $C(Y^{1,0}(mathbb{P}^m))$, that generalizes the conifold singularity to $m>1$, we point out the existence of a formal duality cascade for the corresponding graded quivers.
We study 2d $mathcal{N}=(0,2)$ supersymmetric quiver gauge theories that describe the low-energy dynamics of D1-branes at Calabi-Yau fourfold (CY$_4$) singularities. On general grounds, the holomorphic sector of these theories---matter content and (classical) superpotential interactions---should be fully captured by the topological $B$-model on the CY$_4$. By studying a number of examples, we confirm this expectation and flesh out the dictionary between B-brane category and supersymmetric quiver: the matter content of the supersymmetric quiver is encoded in morphisms between B-branes (that is, Ext groups of coherent sheaves), while the superpotential interactions are encoded in the $A_infty$ algebra satisfied by the morphisms. This provides us with a derivation of the supersymmetric quiver directly from the CY$_4$ geometry. We also suggest a relation between triality of $mathcal{N}=(0,2)$ gauge theories and certain mutations of exceptional collections of sheaves. 0d $mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric quivers, corresponding to D-instantons probing CY$_5$ singularities, can be discussed similarly.
We develop means of computing exact degerenacies of BPS black holes on toric Calabi-Yau manifolds. We show that the gauge theory on the D4 branes wrapping ample divisors reduces to 2D q-deformed Yang-Mills theory on necklaces of P^1s. As explicit examples we consider local P^2, P^1 x P^1 and A_k type ALE space times C. At large N the D-brane partition function factorizes as a sum over squares of chiral blocks, the leading one of which is the topological closed string amplitude on the Calabi-Yau. This is in complete agreement with the recent conjecture of Ooguri, Strominger and Vafa.
We show how the smooth geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds emerges from the thermodynamic limit of the statistical mechanical model of crystal melting defined in our previous paper arXiv:0811.2801. In particular, the thermodynamic partition function of molten crystals is shown to be equal to the classical limit of the partition function of the topological string theory by relating the Ronkin function of the characteristic polynomial of the crystal melting model to the holomorphic 3-form on the corresponding Calabi-Yau manifold.
We prove that a Kahler supermetric on a supermanifold with one complex fermionic dimension admits a super Ricci-flat supermetric if and only if the bosonic metric has vanishing scalar curvature. As a corollary, it follows that Yaus theorem does not hold for supermanifolds.
We show that Calabi-Yau crystals generate certain Chern-Simons knot invariants, with Lagrangian brane insertions generating the unknot and Hopf link invariants. Further, we make the connection of the crystal brane amplitudes to the topological vertex formulation explicit and show that the crystal naturally resums the corresponding topological vertex amplitudes. We also discuss the conifold and double wall crystal model in this context. The results suggest that the free energy associated to the crystal brane amplitudes can be simply expressed as a target space Gopakumar-Vafa expansion.