Topological string theory

About: Topological string theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1206 publications have been published within this topic receiving 54758 citations.

On the exact evaluation of the membrane instanton superpotential in M theory on G(2) holonomy manifold

Abstract: Following the work of [1] on the exact evaluation of the non-perturbative contribution to the superpotential from open-membrane instanton in Heterotic M-theory, we evaluate systematically the contribution to the superpotential of a membrane instanton obtained by wrapping of a single M2-brane, once, on an isolated supersymmetric 3-cycle in a G2-holonomy manifold. We then try to relate the results obtained to those sketched out in [2]. We also do a heat-kernel asymptotics analysis to see whether one gets similar UV-divergent terms for (one or both of) the bosonic and fermionic determinants indicative of (partial) cancellation among them. The answer is in the affirmative, as expected by the supersymmetry of the starting membrane action. This work is a first step, both, in extending the work of [2] to the evaluation of non-perturbative superpotentials for non-rigid supersymmetric 3-cycle wrappings, and in understanding the large-N Chern-Simons/closed type-A topological string theory duality of [3] from M-theory point of view.

String model in differential forms

Abstract: The string model is formulated in terms of two-dimensional differential forms of arbitrary rank The local supersymmetric string action with local conformal and Lorentz symmetries is constructed The connection with topological quantum field theory is discussed Covariant quantization of the model is investigated The critical space-time dimension is found to bed=4

Spacetime foam in twistor string theory

Abstract: We show how a Kahler spacetime foam in four dimensional conformal (super)gravity may be mapped to twistor spaces carrying the D1 brane charge of the B model topological string theory. The spacetime foam is obtained by blowing up an arbitrary number of points in $\C^2$ and can be interpreted as a sum over gravitational instantons. Some twistor spaces for blowups of $\C^2$ are known explicitly. In these cases we write down a meromorphic volume form and suggest a relation to a holomorphic superform on a corresponding super Calabi-Yau manifold.

Exact Instanton Expansion of Superconformal Chern-Simons Theories from Topological Strings

Abstract: It was known that the ABJM matrix model is dual to the topological string theory on a Calabi-Yau manifold. Using this relation it was possible to write down the exact instanton expansion of the partition function of the ABJM matrix model. The expression consists of a universal function constructed from the free energy of the refined topological string theory with an overall topological invariant characterizing the Calabi-Yau manifold. In this paper we explore two other superconformal Chern-Simons theories of the circular quiver type. We find that the partition function of one theory enjoys the same expression from the refined topological string theory as the ABJM matrix model with different topological invariants while that of the other is more general. We also observe an unexpected relation between these two theories.