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We conjecture the existence of four independent gradings in the colored HOMFLY homology. We describe these gradings explicitly for the rectangular colored homology of torus knots and make qualitative predictions of various interesting…
In this paper we use character variety methods to study homomorphisms between the fundamental groups of 3-manifolds, in particular those induced by non-zero degree maps. A {\it knot manifold} is a compact, connected, irreducible, orientable…
A major challenge in the study of the structure of the three-dimensional homology cobordism group is to understand the interaction between hyperbolic geometry and homology cobordism. In this paper, for a hyperbolic homology sphere $Y$ we…
We conjecture that the Fourier coefficients of a degree three Siegel form, $1/\sqrt{\chi_{18}}$, count the degeneracy of three-center BPS bound states in type II string theory compactified on $K3 \times T^2$. We provide evidence for our…
We construct the Seiberg-Witten curve for the E-string theory in six-dimensions. The curve is expressed in terms of affine E_8 characters up to level 6 and is determined by using the mirror-type transformation so that it reproduces the…
We continue our study of heterotic compactifications on non-Kahler complex manifolds with torsion. We give further evidence of the consistency of the six-dimensional manifold presented earlier and discuss the anomaly cancellation and…
In 1985, physicists Dixon, Harvey, Vafa and Witten studied string theories on Calabi-Yau orbifolds (cf. [DHVW]). An interesting discovery in their paper was the prediction that a certain physicist's Euler number of the orbifold must be…
We study the second quantized version of the twisted twining genera of generalized Mathieu moonshine, and prove that they give rise to Siegel modular forms with infinite product representations. Most of these forms are expected to have an…
We consider heterotic string solutions based on a warped product of a four-dimensional domain wall and a six-dimensional internal manifold, preserving two supercharges. The constraints on the internal manifolds with SU(3) structure are…
We study the worldvolume theories of stacks of $Spin(32)/\mathbb{Z}_2$ heterotic NS5-branes probing a transverse singularity $\mathfrak{g}$. We revisit and extend the original classification by Blum and Intriligator, and show that the…
We study closed N=2 strings on orbifolds of the form T^4/Z_2 and C^2/Z_2. We compute the torus partition function and prove its modular invariance. We analyse the BRST cohomology of the theory, construct the vertex operators, and compute…
In this paper we deal with branched coverings over the complement to finitely many exceptional points on the Riemann sphere having the property that the local monodromy around each of the branching points is of finite order. To such a…
We outline the proof that non-triangulable manifolds exist in any dimension greater than four. The arguments involve homology cobordism invariants coming from the Pin(2) symmetry of the Seiberg-Witten equations. We also explore a related…
For a finite dimensional vector space V of dimension n, we consider the incidence correspondence (or partial flag variety) X in P(V) x P(V*), parametrizing pairs consisting of a point and a hyperplane containing it. We completely…
In previous work we showed that the Hurwitz space of W(E_6)-covers of the projective line branched over 24 points dominates via the Prym-Tyurin map the moduli space A_6 of principally polarized abelian 6-folds. Here we determine the 25…
These lectures begin by reviewing the evidence for S duality of the toroidally compactified heterotic string in 4d that was obtained in the period 1992--94. Next they review recently discovered dualities that relate all five of the 10d…
By studying modular invariance properties of some characteristic forms, we obtain twisted anomaly cancellation formulas. We apply these twisted cancellation formulas to study divisibilities on spin manifolds and congruences on spin$^c$…
Using basic homotopy constructions, we show that isomorphism classes of string structures on spin bundles are naturally given by certain degree 3 cohomology classes, which we call string classes, on the total space of the bundle. Using a…
This is a sequel to the paper "The signature package on Witt spaces, I. Index classes" by the same authors. In the first part we investigated, via a parametrix construction, the regularity properties of the signature operator on a…
In this article we consider algebraic structures on the homology of the space of paths in a manifold with endpoints in a submanifold. The Pontryagin-Chas-Sullivan product on the homology of this space had already been investigated by…