English

Anomaly cancellation in the topological string

High Energy Physics - Theory 2020-01-07 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Algebra

Abstract

We describe the coupling of holomorphic Chern-Simons theory at large N with Kodaira-Spencer gravity. We explain a new anomaly cancellation mechanism at all loops in perturbation theory for open-closed topological B-model. At one loop this anomaly cancellation is analogous to the Green-Schwarz mechanism. As an application, we introduce a type I version of Kodaira-Spencer theory in complex dimensions 3 and 5. In complex dimension 5, we show that it can only be coupled consistently at the quantum level to holomorphic Chern-Simons theory with gauge group SO(32). This is analogous to the Green-Schwarz mechanism for the physical type I string. This coupled system is conjectured to be a supersymmetric localization of type I string theory. In complex dimension 3, the required gauge group is SO(8).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1905.09269,
  title  = {Anomaly cancellation in the topological string},
  author = {Kevin Costello and Si Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.09269},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

43 pages, 2 figures. Comments are welcome

R2 v1 2026-06-23T09:18:08.553Z