Calabi-Yau Manifolds, Hermitian Yang-Mills Instantons and Mirror Symmetry

We address the issue why Calabi-Yau manifolds exist with a mirror pair. We observe that the irreducible spinor representation of the Lorentz group Spin(6) requires us to consider the vector spaces of two-forms and four-forms on an equal footing. The doubling of the two-form vector space due to the Hodge duality doubles the variety of six-dimensional spin manifolds. We explore how the doubling is related to the mirror symmetry of Calabi-Yau manifolds. Via the gauge theory formulation of six-dimensional Riemannian manifolds, we show that the curvature tensor of a Calabi-Yau manifold satisfies the Hermitian Yang-Mills equations on the Calabi-Yau manifold. Therefore the mirror symmetry of Calabi-Yau manifolds can be recast as the mirror pair of Hermitian Yang-Mills instantons. We discuss the mirror symmetry from the gauge theory perspective.Comment: v5; 49 pages, version to appear in Advances in High Energy Physic

Heterotic-Heterotic String Duality and Multiple K3 Fibrations

A type IIA string compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold which admits a K3 fibration is believed to be equivalent to a heterotic string in four dimensions. We study cases where a Calabi-Yau manifold can have more than one such fibration leading to equivalences between perturbatively inequivalent heterotic strings. This allows an analysis of an example in six dimensions due to Duff, Minasian and Witten and enables us to go some way to prove a conjecture by Kachru and Vafa. The interplay between gauge groups which arise perturbatively and nonperturbatively is seen clearly in this example. As an extreme case we discuss a Calabi-Yau manifold which admits an infinite number of K3 fibrations leading to infinite set of equivalent heterotic strings.Comment: 13 pages, LaTe

D-branes as a Bubbling Calabi-Yau

We prove that the open topological string partition function on a D-brane configuration in a Calabi-Yau manifold X takes the form of a closed topological string partition function on a different Calabi-Yau manifold X_b. This identification shows that the physics of D-branes in an arbitrary background X of topological string theory can be described either by open+closed string theory in X or by closed string theory in X_b. The physical interpretation of the ''bubbling'' Calabi-Yau X_b is as the space obtained by letting the D-branes in X undergo a geometric transition. This implies, in particular, that the partition function of closed topological string theory on certain bubbling Calabi-Yau manifolds are invariants of knots in the three-sphere.Comment: 32 pages; v.2 reference adde

Isometric embeddings of families of special Lagrangian submanifolds

We prove that certain Riemannian manifolds can be isometrically embedded inside Calabi-Yau manifolds. For example we prove that given any real-analytic one parameter family of Riemannian metrics $g_t$ on a 3-dimensional manifold $Y$ with volume form independent of $t$ and with a real-analytic family of nowhere vanishing harmonic one forms $\theta_t$, then $(Y, g_t)$ can be realized as a family of special Lagrangian submanifolds of a Calabi-Yau manifold $X$. We also prove that certain principal torus bundles can be equivariantly and isometrically embedded inside Calabi-Yau manifolds with torus action. We use this to construct examples of $n$-parameter families of special Lagrangian tori inside $n+k$-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds with torus symmetry. We also compute McLean's metric of 3-dimensional special Lagrangian fibrations with $T^2$-symmetry.Comment: 27 page