Stable sheaves on elliptic fibrations

We characterize the subscheme of the moduli space of torsion-free sheaves on an elliptic surface which are stable of relative degree zeero (with respect to a polarization of type aH+bf, H being the section and f the elliptic fibre) which is isomorphic, via the relative Fourier-Mukai transform, with the relative compactified Simpson Jacobian of the family of those curves D in the surface which are flat over the base of the elliptic fibration. This generalizes and completes earlier constructions due to Friedman, Morgan and Witten. We also study the relative moduli scheme of sheaves whose restriction to each fibre is torsion-free and semistable of rank n and degree zero for higher dimensional elliptic fibrations. The relative Fourier-Mukai transform induces an isomorphic between this relative moduli space and the relative n-th symmetric product of the fibration.Comment: AMS-LaTeX, 18 pages, XY-pic; new title, some modifications; final version as accepted in J. Geom. Phy

D-brane Deconstructions in IIB Orientifolds

With model building applications in mind, we collect and develop basic techniques to analyze the landscape of D7-branes in type IIB compact Calabi-Yau orientifolds, in three different pictures: F-theory, the D7 worldvolume theory and D9-anti-D9 tachyon condensation. A significant complication is that consistent D7-branes in the presence of O7^- planes are generically singular, with singularities locally modeled by the Whitney Umbrella. This invalidates the standard formulae for charges, moduli space and flux lattice dimensions. We infer the correct formulae by comparison to F-theory and derive them independently and more generally from the tachyon picture, and relate these numbers to the closed string massless spectrum of the orientifold compactification in an interesting way. We furthermore give concrete recipes to explicitly and systematically construct nontrivial D-brane worldvolume flux vacua in arbitrary Calabi-Yau orientifolds, illustrate how to read off D-brane flux content, enhanced gauge groups and charged matter spectra from tachyon matrices, and demonstrate how brane recombination in general leads to flux creation, as required by charge conservation and by equivalence of geometric and gauge theory moduli spaces.Comment: 49 pages, v2: two references adde