No Arabic abstract
Motivated by the S-duality conjecture of Vafa-Witten, Tanaka-Thomas have developed a theory of Vafa-Witten invariants for projective surfaces using the moduli space of Higgs sheaves. Their definition and calculation prove the S-duality prediction of Vafa-Witten in many cases in the side of gauge group $SU(r)$. In this survey paper for ICCM-2019 we review the S-duality conjecture in physics by Vafa-Witten and the definition of Vafa-Witten invariants for smooth projective surfaces and surface Deligne-Mumford stacks. We make a prediction that the Vafa-Witten invariants for Deligne-Mumford surfaces may give the generating series for the Langlands dual group $^{L}SU(r)=SU(r)/zz_r$. We survey a check for the projective plane $pp^2$.
We introduce a global Landau-Ginzburg model which is mirror to several toric Deligne-Mumford stacks and describe the change of the Gromov-Witten theories under discrepant transformations. We prove a formal decomposition of the quantum cohomology D-modules (and of the all-genus Gromov-Witten potentials) under a discrepant toric wall-crossing. In the case of weighted blowups of weak-Fano compact toric stacks along toric centres, we show that an analytic lift of the formal decomposition corresponds, via the $widehat{Gamma}$-integral structure, to an Orlov-type semiorthogonal decomposition of topological $K$-groups. We state a conjectural functoriality of Gromov-Witten theories under discrepant transformations in terms of a Riemann-Hilbert problem.
In [MT2] the Vafa-Witten theory of complex projective surfaces is lifted to oriented $mathbb C^*$-equivariant cohomology theories. Here we study the K-theoretic refinement. It gives rational functions in $t^{1/2}$ invariant under $t^{1/2}leftrightarrow t^{-1/2}$ which specialise to numerical Vafa-Witten invariants at $t=1$. On the instanton branch the invariants give the virtual $chi_{-t}^{}$-genus refinement of Gottsche-Kool. Applying modularity to their calculations gives predictions for the contribution of the monopole branch. We calculate some cases and find perfect agreement. We also do calculations on K3 surfaces, finding Jacobi forms refining the usual modular forms, proving a conjecture of Gottsche-Kool. We determine the K-theoretic virtual classes of degeneracy loci using Eagon-Northcott complexes, and show they calculate refined Vafa-Witten invariants. Using this Laarakker [Laa] proves universality results for the invariants.
We generalize the construction of a moduli space of semistable pairs parametrizing isomorphism classes of morphisms from a fixed coherent sheaf to any sheaf with fixed Hilbert polynomial under a notion of stability to the case of projective Deligne-Mumford stacks. We study the deformation and obstruction theories of stable pairs, and then prove the existence of virtual fundamental classes for some cases of dimension two and three. This leads to a definition of Pandharipande-Thomas invariants on three-dimensional smooth projective Deligne-Mumford stacks.
We conjecture a formula for the refined $mathrm{SU}(3)$ Vafa-Witten invariants of any smooth surface $S$ satisfying $H_1(S,mathbb{Z}) = 0$ and $p_g(S)>0$. The unrefined formula corrects a proposal by Labastida-Lozano and involves unexpected algebraic expressions in modular functions. We prove that our formula satisfies a refined $S$-duality modularity transformation. We provide evidence for our formula by calculating virtual $chi_y$-genera of moduli spaces of rank 3 stable sheaves on $S$ in examples using Mochizukis formula. Further evidence is based on the recent definition of refined $mathrm{SU}(r)$ Vafa-Witten invariants by Maulik-Thomas and subsequent calculations on nested Hilbert schemes by Thomas (rank 2) and Laarakker (rank 3).
We propose a definition of Vafa-Witten invariants counting semistable Higgs pairs on a polarised surface. We use virtual localisation applied to Mochizuki/Joyce-Song pairs. For $K_Sle0$ we expect our definition coincides with an alternative definition using weighted Euler characteristics. We prove this for deg $K_S<0$ here, and it is proved for $S$ a K3 surface in cite{MT}. For K3 surfaces we calculate the invariants in terms of modular forms which generalise and prove conjectures of Vafa and Witten.