Graded quivers and B-branes at Calabi-Yau singularities


Abstract in English

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.

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