Stable pair invariants under blow-ups (Q269888)

Motivated by Ruan's famous conjecture on the relation between Gromov-Witten theory and birational geometry, and the Gromov-Witten/Stable pair correspondence, the paper under review studies the transformation of the stable pair invariants (defined by Pandharipande-Thomas) under blow-ups along curves and points. Let \(X\) be a nonsingular projective complex threefold and \(p:\tilde{X}\to X\) be the blow-up of \(X\) along a point \(P\in X\) or a nonsingular irreducible curve \(C \subset X\). Denote by \(E\) the exceptional divisor of the blow-up, by \(e\) the class of a line in the fiber of \(E\), and by \(p^{!}: H_2(X,\mathbb{Z})\to H_2(\tilde{X},\mathbb{Z})\) the natural injection via the pull-back of 2-cycles. Let \(Z(q)\) be the generating of the stable pair invariants, \(\beta \in H_2(X,\mathbb{Z})\), \(\gamma_i \in H^*(X,\mathbb{Q})\), \(d_i\in \mathbb{Z}_{\geq0}\), and \(k\in \mathbb{Z}_{>0}\). The main result of the paper under review can be summarized as follows: In the case of blow-up at \(P\) (assume \(\deg(\gamma_i)>0\)): \[ Z \left(\tilde{X};q \mid \prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(p^*\gamma_i)\right)_{p^!\beta+ke}=0. \] \[ Z \left(X;q \mid \prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(\gamma_i)\right)_{\beta}=Z \left(\tilde{X};q \mid \prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(p^*\gamma_i)\right)_{p^!\beta}. \] \[ Z \left(X;q \mid \tau_0(pt)\prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(\gamma_i)\right)_{\beta}=(1+q)^2 Z \left(\tilde{X};q \mid \prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(p^*\gamma_i)\right)_{p^!\beta-e}. \] \[ Z \left(X;q \mid \tau_1(pt)\prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(\gamma_i)\right)_{\beta}=\frac{1}{2}(1-q^2) Z \left(\tilde{X};q \mid \tau_0(-E^2)\prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(p^*\gamma_i)\right)_{p^!\beta-e}. \] In the case of blow-up at \(C\) (assume \(\gamma_i\) has support away from \(C\)): \[ Z \left(\tilde{X};q \mid \prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(p^*\gamma_i)\right)_{p^!\beta+ke}=0. \] \[ Z \left(X;q \mid \prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(\gamma_i)\right)_{\beta}=Z \left(\tilde{X};q \mid \prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(p^*\gamma_i)\right)_{p^!\beta}. \] \[ Z \left(X;q \mid \tau_0(C)\prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(\gamma_i)\right)_{\beta}=(1+q) Z \left(\tilde{X};q \mid \prod_{i=1}^m\tau_{d_i}(p^*\gamma_i)\right)_{p^!\beta-e}. \] The paper under review also studies the implicaitons of the formulas above to the BPS invariants of \(X\) and \(\tilde{X}\). The main technical tools in the proofs of the results above are the degeneration formula and the absolute/relative correspondence for the stable pair invariants.