Related papers: Prepotentials from Symmetric Products
We consider structures analogous to symplectic Lefschetz pencils in the context of a closed 4-manifold equipped with a `near-symplectic' structure (ie, a closed 2-form which is symplectic outside a union of circles where it vanishes…
We explore 6-dimensional compactifications of F-theory exhibiting (2,0) superconformal theories coupled to gravity that include discretely charged superconformal matter. Beginning with F-theory geometries with Abelian gauge fields and…
In the first part we survey some of the known results and conjectures on compact Hyperkaehler (HK) manifolds. In the second part we presents a program which aims to show that HK four-folds whose second cohomology (with 4-tuple cup-product)…
We study F-theory duals of six dimensional heterotic vacua in extreme regions of moduli space where the heterotic string is very strongly coupled. We demonstrate how to use orientifold limits of these F-theory duals to regain a perturbative…
In this paper, we investigate the $L^2$-Dolbeault cohomology of the symmetric power of cotangent bundles of ball quotients with finite volume, as well as their toroidal compactification. Through the application of Hodge theory for complete…
We study orbifold compactifications of F-theory which lead to $N=1$ supersymmetry in 6 and 4 spacetime dimensions. These are dual to specific orientifolds of M-theory, and in many cases to orientifolds of type IIB string theory. The…
In this note we study warped compactifications of M-theory on manifolds of Spin(7) holonomy in the presence of background 4-form flux. The explicit form of the superpotential can be given in terms of the self -dual Cayley calibration on the…
We consider non perturbative effects in M-theory compactifications on a seven-manifold of G_2 holonomy arising from membranes wrapped on supersymmetric three-cycles. When membranes are wrapped on associative submanifolds they induce a…
We compute the formal Poisson cohomology of a broken Lefschetz fibration by calculating it at fold and Lefschetz singularities. Near a fold singularity the computation reduces to that for a point singularity in 3 dimensions. For the Poisson…
If $(X, \omega)$ is a symplectic manifold, and $\Sigma$ is a smooth symplectic submanifold Poincar\'e dual to a positive multiple of $\omega$, $X \setminus \Sigma$ admits a compactification as a Liouville domain, which we then complete to…
We briefly review a class of four dimensional $\mathcal N=3$ field theories constructed by taking a quotient of $\mathcal N=4$ SYM with gauge group $U(N)$. The quotient involves a discrete symmetry that only exists for specific, order one,…
We discuss various aspects of "braid spaces'' or configuration spaces of unordered points on manifolds. First we describe how the homology of these spaces is affected by puncturing the underlying manifold, hence extending some results of…
We discuss type I -- heterotic duality in four-dimensional models obtained as a Coulomb phase of the six-dimensional U(16) orientifold model compactified on T^2 with arbitrary SU(16) Wilson lines. We show that Kahler potentials, gauge…
We study compactifications of F-theory on certain Calabi--Yau threefolds. We find that $N=2$ dualities of type II/heterotic strings in 4 dimensions get promoted to $N=1$ dualities between heterotic string and F-theory in 6 dimensions. The…
In this paper, we give the sharp estimates for the degree of symmetry and the semi-simple degree of symmetry of certain four dimensional fiber bundles by virtue of the rigidity theorem of harmonic maps due to Schoen and Yau. As a corollary…
The study of the geometry of Calabi-Yau fourfolds is relevant for compactifications of string theory, M-theory, and F-theory to various dimensions. In the first part of this thesis, we study the action of mirror symmetry on two-dimensional…
The topology of broken Lefschetz fibrations is studied by means of handle decompositions. We consider a slight generalization of round handles, and describe the handle diagrams for all that appear in dimension four. We establish simplified…
We consider the compactification of the E8xE8 heterotic string on a K3 surface with "the spin connection embedded in the gauge group" and the dual picture in the type IIA string (or F-theory) on a Calabi-Yau threefold X. It turns out that…
We study the dynamics of supersymmetric theories in five dimensions obtained by compactifications of M-theory on a Calabi-Yau threefold X. For a compact X, this is determined by the geometry of X, in particular the Kahler class dependence…
We re-examine the question of heterotic - heterotic string duality in six dimensions and argue that the $E_8\times E_8$ heterotic string, compactified on $K3$ with equal instanton numbers in the two $E_8$'s, has a self-duality that inverts…