HOMFLY polynomials, stable pairs and motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants

Hilbert scheme topological invariants of plane curve singularities are identified to framed threefold stable pair invariants. As a result, the conjecture of Oblomkov and Shende on HOMFLY polynomials of links of plane curve singularities is given a Calabi-Yau threefold interpretation. The motivic Donaldson-Thomas theory developed by M. Kontsevich and the third author then yields natural motivic invariants for algebraic knots. This construction is motivated by previous work of V. Shende, C. Vafa and the first author on the large $N$ duality derivation of the above conjecture.Comment: 59 pages; v2 references added, minor corrections; v3: exposition improved, proofs expanded, results unchanged, to appear in Comm. Num. Th. Phy

Freed-Witten anomaly in general flux compactification

Turning on a NS-NS three-form flux in a compact space drives some D-branes to be either Freed-Witten anomalous or unstable to decay into fluxes by the appearance of instantonic branes. By applying T-duality on a toroidal compactification, the NS-flux is transformed into metric fluxes. We propose a T-dual version of the Atiyah-Hirzebruch Spectral Sequence upon which we describe the Freed-Witten anomaly and the brane-flux transition driven by NS and metric fluxes in a twisted torus. The required conditions to cancel the anomaly and the appearance of new instantonic branes are also described. In addition, we give an example in which all D6-branes wrapping Freed-Witten anomaly-free three-cycles in the twisted torus T^6/Z(2)XZ(2) are nevertheless unstable to be transformed into fluxes. Evenmore we find a topological transformation between RR, NS-NS and metric fluxes driven by a chain of instantonic branes.Comment: v3: Shortened version. Examples added. Main results unchange

Quantization of the Chern-Simons Coupling Constant

We investigate the quantum consistency of p-form Maxwell-Chern-Simons electrodynamics in 3p+2 spacetime dimensions (for p odd). These are the dimensions where the Chern--Simons term is cubic, i.e., of the form FFA. For the theory to be consistent at the quantum level in the presence of magnetic and electric sources, we find that the Chern--Simons coupling constant must be quantized. We compare our results with the bosonic sector of eleven dimensional supergravity and find that the Chern--Simons coupling constant in that case takes its corresponding minimal allowed value.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, JHEP3.cls. Equation (8.6) corrected and perfect agreement with previous results is obtaine

The Ruled Vertex and Nontoric del Pezzo Surfaces

We construct the topological partition function of local nontoric del Pezzo surfaces using the ruled vertex formalism.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure

Prepotentials for local mirror symmetry via Calabi-Yau fourfolds

In this paper, we first derive an intrinsic definition of classical triple intersection numbers of K_S, where S is a complex toric surface, and use this to compute the extended Picard-Fuchs system of K_S of our previous paper, without making use of the instanton expansion. We then extend this formalism to local fourfolds K_X, where X is a complex 3-fold. As a result, we are able to fix the prepotential of local Calabi-Yau threefolds K_S up to polynomial terms of degree 2. We then outline methods of extending the procedure to non canonical bundle cases.Comment: 42 pages, 7 figures. Expanded, reorganized, and added a theoretical background for the calculation

Domain Walls on Singularities

We describe domain walls that live on $A_2$ and $A_3$ singularities. The walls are BPS if the singularity is resolved and non--BPS if it is deformed and fibered. We show that these domain walls may interpolate between vacua that support monopoles and/or vortices.Comment: 16 pages in phyzzx.te

Duality symmetry and the form fields of M-theory

In previous work we derived the topological terms in the M-theory action in terms of certain characters that we defined. In this paper, we propose the extention of these characters to include the dual fields. The unified treatment of the M-theory four-form field strength and its dual leads to several observations. In particular we elaborate on the possibility of a twisted cohomology theory with a twist given by degrees greater than three.Comment: 12 pages, modified material on the differentia