Calabi-Yau manifolds, Hermitian Yang-Mills instantons, and mirror symmetry (Q1682357)

Summary: We address the issue of why Calabi-Yau manifolds exist with a mirror pair. We observe that the irreducible spinor representation of the Lorentz group \(\text{Spin}(6)\) 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.