Calabi-Yau manifolds and mirror symmetry (Q4789477)

These notes originally grew out of a post-graduate course taught at the University of Warwick in the winter of 1998. Like at the summer school in Nordfjordeid, Norway, June 2001, the author's goal was to introduce young researchers to some of the basic geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds and to the mirror symmetry phenomenon. In this version under review, which incorporates \S\S 13-19 of the whole set of summer school proceedings, the author begins -- after a brief introduction (\S 13) -- in \S 14 with some of the classical results about Calabi-Yau manifolds, pre-dating the contemporary ``quantum era'' of the mirror symmetry story. The most fundamental result in the theory of Calabi-Yau manifolds, namely the Bogomolov-Tian-Todorov unobstructedness theorem, is treated in full detail, together with some of its most important consequences. The discussion includes the results of P. M. H. Wilson on the structure and deformation invariance of the Kähler cone of Calabi-Yau threefolds as well as a brief survey of the enormous range of examples of Calabi-Yau three-folds currently known. The following \S 15 is devoted to Kähler moduli and Gromov-Witten invariants, whilst \S 16 explains another fundamental tool in mirror symmetry theory, namely the basics on variation and degeneration of Hodge structures. These two sections provide all the essential background material needed for defining mirror pairs of Calabi-Yau threefolds and stating the mirror symmetry conjecture, the latter of which is done in \S 17 of the proceedings volume. Mirror symmetry in practice -- this is the title of \S 18, in which the author carries out the example of a certain one-parameter family of quintic hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb{P}^4 (\mathbb{C})\). This example, a milestone in the history of the mirror symmetry conjecture, was studied in the pioneering paper of \textit{P. Candelas}, \textit{X. C. de la Ossa}, \textit{P. S. Green} and \textit{L. Parkes} from 1991 [in: Essays on mirror manifold, Cambridge, 31-95 (1992; Zbl 0826.32016)], and the author of the present paper gives here an extended account of it. This is an excellent illustration of how to compute rigorously the predictions for the numbers of rational curves on a quintic using the structures that have been set up in the previous sections. In the last section (\S 19), the author presents some more recent ideas about mirror symmetry, focussing on the approach proposed by \textit{A. Strominger}, \textit{S.-T. Yau} and \textit{E. Zaslow} in 1996 [Nucl. Phys. B 479, 243-259 (1996; Zbl 0896.14024)]. Of course, the author could not cover all the fundamental aspects of mirror symmetry, but he has masterly managed to take the possibly shortest path through the relevant material underlying the mirror symmetry theory for Calabi-Yau manifolds. Also, the author has always tried to present ideas with as little technical machinery as possible, which is certainly very useful for beginners in the field, and he has inserted a few related exercises at the end of each section, which strengthen the topics treated in the lectures. Altogether, these introductory notes on Calabi-Yau manifolds and mirror symmetry represent an excellent starting point for beginners in this fascinating field of current research, and a profound source for more advanced studies just as well. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1001.00028].