Twistorial topological strings and a \({tt}^*\) geometry for \(\mathcal{N} = 2\) theories in \(4d\) (Q344404)

This article contains a lot amount of material, describes many important mathematical techniques and includes several new results concerning supersymmetric theories, in particular in the context of so-called \textit{twistorial topological strings}. And so the paper serves well as an introduction and an overview of the subject and helps with a long list (117) of references. In previous publications Cecotti and Vafa introduced the \(tt^*\) geometry in 3 and 4 dimensions and a twistorial extension of topological strings. The present paper defines these strings in the context of four-dimensional \(\mathcal{N}=2\) supersymmetric theories, the \(tt^*\) geometry and the Nekrasov-Shatashvili background. The paper has nine Sections. Section 1 provides an introduction and states that the main aim of this paper is make the twistorial extension of topological open strings more precise and to compute the corresponding amplitudes in some simple cases. This extension is reviewed in Section 2 in full length, starting with a quick review of the \(tt^*\) geometry. In Section 3 twistorial closed topological strings are defined and interesting limits are discussed. In Section 4 it is argued that the full twistorial topological string amplitudes may be thought of as solutions to a Riemann-Hilbert problem for quantum operators. Section 5 discusses twistorial extensions of supersymmetric matrix models and the associated D-brane wave function. In Section 6 it is shown how the large \(N\) behavior of the \(tt^*\) geometries produces the string amplitudes of Section 3. In Section 7 the 3-point function for the Liouville theory is evaluated, while in Section 8 the classical limit of the topological string is studied. Concluding remarks are presented in Section 9. Many important technical details are provided in three Appendices.