Geometric engineering of (framed) BPS states

(Equivariant) Chow groups and rings; motives (14C15) Gromov-Witten invariants, quantum cohomology, Gopakumar-Vafa invariants, Donaldson-Thomas invariants (algebro-geometric aspects) (14N35) Representations of quivers and partially ordered sets (16G20) Yang-Mills and other gauge theories in quantum field theory (81T13) String and superstring theories; other extended objects (e.g., branes) in quantum field theory (81T30)

Abstract: BPS quivers for N=2 SU(N) gauge theories are derived via geometric engineering from derived categories of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds. While the outcome is in agreement of previous low energy constructions, the geometric approach leads to several new results. An absence of walls conjecture is formulated for all values of N, relating the field theory BPS spectrum to large radius D-brane bound states. Supporting evidence is presented as explicit computations of BPS degeneracies in some examples. These computations also prove the existence of BPS states of arbitrarily high spin and infinitely many marginal stability walls at weak coupling. Moreover, framed quiver models for framed BPS states are naturally derived from this formalism, as well as a mathematical formulation of framed and unframed BPS degeneracies in terms of motivic and cohomological Donaldson-Thomas invariants. We verify the conjectured absence of BPS states with "exotic" SU(2)_R quantum numbers using motivic DT invariants. This application is based in particular on a complete recursive algorithm which determine the unframed BPS spectrum at any point on the Coulomb branch in terms of noncommutative Donaldson-Thomas invariants for framed quiver representations.

Review text

This long and diverse paper covers a very wide range of topics and problems in mathematical physics and algebraic geometry, but the main theme is the study of what happens to BPS states under ``geometric engineering. The latter is a construction introduced by \textit{S. Katz} et al. [Nucl. Phys., B 497, No. 1--2, 173--195 (1997; Zbl 0935.81058)], which constructs an \(\mathcal N=2\) supersymmetric \(4d\) gauge theory out of a (noncompact) toric Calabi-Yau \(3\)-fold with singularities. The authors construct from these Calabi-Yau varieties certain collections of ``fractional branes and their \(\text{Ext}^1\)-quiver \(\mathcal Q\). In the IIA field theory limit the fractional branes are BPS particles and their central mass is computed. The gauge theory BPS states are the bound states of the fractional branes, and the derived category of the Calabi-Yau \(3\)-fold is related to a derived category associated to \(\mathcal Q\). Various conjectures about BPS indices and their relations to Donaldson-Thomas invariants are discussed. The authors also study the IIB field theory limit and predict a complete geometric construction for the weak coupling BPS spectrum of the gauge theory. They study the ``large radius BPS spectrum and the analogous weak coupling BPS spectrum for the gauge theory, especially for gauge groups \(\mathrm{SU}(2)\) and \(\mathrm{SU}(3)\). A number of useful appendices discuss: (A) the explicit quivers that arise; (B) a review of the theory of motives and motivic measures; (C) Kronecker modules for the quiver with two nodes and two arrows from the first node to the second node; (D) background material on extensions; and (E) classification of fixed points.

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