Gauss-Manin connection in disguise: Calabi-Yau threefolds (Q2630726)

The authors describe a new framework for higher genus mirror symmetry motivated by the holomorphic anomaly equations, but set in purely algebraic terms of Grothendieck's de Rham cohomology and Katz-Oda's ``Gauss-Manin connection in disguise'' (Deligne's term) that ``disguises'' the variation of Hodge structures and periods. The complexity of expressions for periods prevents the methods of Givental and Zinger from working to establish mirror symmetry in the higher genus. The authors believe that their algebraic version of the holomorphic anomaly equations offers a more promising way forward. The base space \(T\) is the moduli of Calabi-Yau threefolds of fixed topological type enhanced with differential forms, which admits the right action of certain algebraic group \(G\) of upper triangular matrices. The paper relies on some conjectural technical assumptions, namely that \(T\) is canonically an affine variety over \(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}\), that the action of \(G\) on it is algebraic, and that there is a universal family \(X/T\) over \(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}\) such that no \(X\) has local automorphisms that act non-identically on \(H_{\mathrm{dR}}^3(X)\). The first main result is that certain vector fields defined using special geometry of deformation spaces of Calabi-Yau threefolds correspond to coordinates on \(T\). These vector fields are the key ingredients in the algebraic version of the holomorphic anomaly equations. In the case of elliptic curves they generate the classical \(\mathfrak{sl}_2\) Lie algebra over \(\mathcal{O}_T\), the \(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}\) algebra of regular functions on \(T\). The genus one topological string partition function \(F_1^{\text{alg}}\) belongs to \(\log\mathcal{O}_T^*\), where \(\mathcal{O}_T^*\) denotes the invertible functions, and \(F_g^{\text{alg}}\) for \(g\geq2\) turn out to belong to \(\mathcal{O}_T\) itself. They are not defined by the holomorphic anomaly equations uniquely, however, only up to an additive ambiguity in \(\log\mathcal{O}_S^*\) and \(\mathcal{O}_S\), respectively, where \(S\) is the moduli of pairs \((X,\omega_1)\) with \(\omega_1\) being a holomorphic \(3\)-form on \(X\). This description of the ambiguity is the second main result, and it implies that \(\mathcal{O}_T\) generalizes the classical algebras of quasi-modular forms on elliptic curves. In the case of the quintic the authors compute the \(q\)-expansions of a set of generators of \(\mathcal{O}_T\), substitute them into \(F_g^{\text{alg}}\), and recover the Gromov-Witten invariants of the \(A\)-model on the mirror quintic.