Related papers: Instantons and infinite distances
We study instanton solutions and superpotentials for the large number of vacua of the plane-wave matrix model and a 2+1 dimensional Super Yang-Mills theory on $R\times S^2$ with sixteen supercharges. We get the superpotential in the weak…
We investigate swampland conjectures for quantum gravity in the context of M-theory compactified on Calabi-Yau threefolds which admit infinite sequences of flops. Naively, the moduli space of such compactifications contains paths of…
Much recent attention has focused on theories with large extra compactified dimensions. However, while the phenomenological implications of the volume moduli associated with such compactifications are well understood, relatively little…
We study superpotentials from worldsheet instantons in heterotic Calabi-Yau compactifications for vector bundles constructed from line bundle sums, monads and extensions. Within a certain class of manifolds and for certain second homology…
The moduli space of spiked instantons that arises in the context of the BPS/CFT correspondence is realised as the moduli space of classical vacua, i.e. low-energy open string field configurations, of a certain stack of intersecting…
An instanton $(E, D)$ on a (pseudo-)hyperk\"ahler manifold $M$ is a vector bundle $E$ associated to a principal $G$-bundle with a connection $D$ whose curvature is pointwise invariant under the quaternionic structures of $T_x M, \ x\in M$,…
We initiate the systematic study of $G_2$-instantons with $SU(2)^2$-symmetry. As well as developing foundational theory, we give existence, non-existence and classification results for these instantons. We particularly focus on…
We describe the modern formalism, ideas and applications of the instanton calculus for gauge theories with, and without, supersymmetry. Particular emphasis is put on developing a formalism that can deal with any number of instantons. This…
In a toroidal orbifold of type IIB string theory we study instanton effects in N=2 super Yang-Mills theories engineered with systems of wrapped magnetized D9 branes and Euclidean D5 branes. We analyze the various open string sectors in this…
Instanton contributions in 2d string theory are known to include subtle numerical factors $\zeta_n$ closely related to a contour prescription in multi-instanton string amplitudes. Both ingredients appear to be ambiguous due to a degeneracy…
With the perspective of looking for experimentally detectable physical applications of the so-called topological embedding, a procedure recently proposed by the author for quantizing a field theory around a non-discrete space of classical…
We study finite action anti-self-dual Yang-Mills connections on the multi-Taub-NUT space. We establish the curvature and the harmonic spinors decay rates and compute the index of the associated Dirac operator. This is the first in a series…
We analyse the non-perturbative superpotential due to M5-brane instantons in F-theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau fourfolds. The M5 partition function is obtained via holomorphic factorisation by explicitly performing the sum over…
We show that a Calabi-Yau structure of dimension $d$ on a smooth dg category $C$ induces a symplectic form of degree $2-d$ on the moduli space of objects $M_{C}$. We show moreover that a relative Calabi-Yau structure on a dg functor $C \to…
We study, using ADHM construction, instanton effects in an ${\CN}=2$ superconformal $Sp(N)$ gauge theory, arising as effective field theory on a system of $N$ D-3-branes near an orientifold 7-plane and 8 D-7-branes in type I' string theory.…
The present paper is the second part of our project in which we describe quantum field theories with instantons in a novel way by using the "infinite radius limit" (rather than the limit of free field theory) as the starting point. The…
D-instantons are used to probe the near-horizon geometry of D3-branes systems on orbifold spaces. For fractional D3-branes, D-instanton calculus correctly reproduces the gauge beta-function and U(1)_R anomaly of the corresponding N=2…
We derive the explicit formula for fractional BPS lumps (or fractional instantons) in the $\mathbb{C}P^{N-1}$ nonlinear sigma model on a two-dimensional torus under various shift-clock twisted boundary conditions. After regularizing the…
These are notes based on lectures given at TASI99. We review the geometry of the moduli space of N=2 theories in four dimensions from the point of view of superstring compactification. The cases of a type IIA or type IIB string compactified…
In the reduction of 4d dualities to 3d there are non-perturbative effects arising from monopoles acting as instantons. This mechanism has been reproduced in string theory by engineering the theories in a IIA brane setup. Nevertheless there…