1,169 research outputs found
Holomorphic Anomalies in Topological Field Theories
We study the stringy genus one partition function of SCFT's. It is
shown how to compute this using an anomaly in decoupling of BRST trivial states
from the partition function. A particular limit of this partition function
yields the partition function of topological theory coupled to topological
gravity. As an application we compute the number of holomorphic elliptic curves
over certain Calabi-Yau manifolds including the quintic threefold. This may be
viewed as the first application of mirror symmetry at the string quantum level.Comment: 32 pages. Appendix by S.Kat
Examples of Riemannian Manifolds with non-negative sectional curvature
An updated version with a few corrections.Comment: 32 page
New Results in Sasaki-Einstein Geometry
This article is a summary of some of the author's work on Sasaki-Einstein
geometry. A rather general conjecture in string theory known as the AdS/CFT
correspondence relates Sasaki-Einstein geometry, in low dimensions, to
superconformal field theory; properties of the latter are therefore reflected
in the former, and vice versa. Despite this physical motivation, many recent
results are of independent geometrical interest, and are described here in
purely mathematical terms: explicit constructions of infinite families of both
quasi-regular and irregular Sasaki-Einstein metrics; toric Sasakian geometry;
an extremal problem that determines the Reeb vector field for, and hence also
the volume of, a Sasaki-Einstein manifold; and finally, obstructions to the
existence of Sasaki-Einstein metrics. Some of these results also provide new
insights into Kahler geometry, and in particular new obstructions to the
existence of Kahler-Einstein metrics on Fano orbifolds.Comment: 31 pages, no figures. Invited contribution to the proceedings of the
conference "Riemannian Topology: Geometric Structures on Manifolds"; minor
typos corrected, reference added; published version; Riemannian Topology and
Geometric Structures on Manifolds (Progress in Mathematics), Birkhauser (Nov
2008
The deformed Hermitian-Yang-Mills equation in geometry and physics
We provide an introduction to the mathematics and physics of the deformed
Hermitian-Yang-Mills equation, a fully nonlinear geometric PDE on Kahler
manifolds which plays an important role in mirror symmetry. We discuss the
physical origin of the equation, and some recent progress towards its solution.
In dimension 3 we prove a new Chern number inequality and discuss the
relationship with algebraic stability conditions.Comment: 20 page
Matrix string states in pure 2d Yang Mills theories
We quantize pure 2d Yang-Mills theory on a torus in the gauge where the field
strength is diagonal. Because of the topological obstructions to a global
smooth diagonalization, we find string-like states in the spectrum similar to
the ones introduced by various authors in Matrix string theory. We write
explicitly the partition function, which generalizes the one already known in
the literature, and we discuss the role of these states in preserving modular
invariance. Some speculations are presented about the interpretation of 2d
Yang-Mills theory as a Matrix string theory.Comment: Latex file of 38 pages plus 6 eps figures. A note and few references
added, figures improve
Localization and Diagonalization: A review of functional integral techniques for low-dimensional gauge theories and topological field theories
We review localization techniques for functional integrals which have
recently been used to perform calculations in and gain insight into the
structure of certain topological field theories and low-dimensional gauge
theories. These are the functional integral counterparts of the Mathai-Quillen
formalism, the Duistermaat-Heckman theorem, and the Weyl integral formula
respectively. In each case, we first introduce the necessary mathematical
background (Euler classes of vector bundles, equivariant cohomology, topology
of Lie groups), and describe the finite dimensional integration formulae. We
then discuss some applications to path integrals and give an overview of the
relevant literature. The applications we deal with include supersymmetric
quantum mechanics, cohomological field theories, phase space path integrals,
and two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory.Comment: 72 pages (60 A4 pages), LaTeX (to appear in the Journal of
Mathematical Physics Special Issue on Functional Integration (May 1995)
Almost Commuting Matrices, Localized Wannier Functions, and the Quantum Hall Effect
For models of non-interacting fermions moving within sites arranged on a
surface in three dimensional space, there can be obstructions to finding
localized Wannier functions. We show that such obstructions are -theoretic
obstructions to approximating almost commuting, complex-valued matrices by
commuting matrices, and we demonstrate numerically the presence of this
obstruction for a lattice model of the quantum Hall effect in a spherical
geometry. The numerical calculation of the obstruction is straightforward, and
does not require translational invariance or introducing a flux torus.
We further show that there is a index obstruction to approximating
almost commuting self-dual matrices by exactly commuting self-dual matrices,
and present additional conjectures regarding the approximation of almost
commuting real and self-dual matrices by exactly commuting real and self-dual
matrices. The motivation for considering this problem is the case of physical
systems with additional antiunitary symmetries such as time reversal or
particle-hole conjugation.
Finally, in the case of the sphere--mathematically speaking three almost
commuting Hermitians whose sum of square is near the identity--we give the
first quantitative result showing this index is the only obstruction to finding
commuting approximations. We review the known non-quantitative results for the
torus.Comment: 35 pages, 2 figure
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