English

Donaldson-Witten theory and indefinite theta functions

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-12-11 v2

Abstract

We consider partition functions with insertions of surface operators of topologically twisted N=2, SU(2) supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, or Donaldson-Witten theory for short, on a four-manifold. If the metric of the compact four-manifold has positive scalar curvature, Moore and Witten have shown that the partition function is completely determined by the integral over the Coulomb branch parameter aa, while more generally the Coulomb branch integral captures the wall-crossing behavior of both Donaldson polynomials and Seiberg-Witten invariants. We show that after addition of a Q-exact surface operator to the Moore-Witten integrand, the integrand can be written as a total derivative to the anti-holomorphic coordinate aˉ\bar a using Zwegers' indefinite theta functions. In this way, we reproduce G\"ottsche's expressions for Donaldson invariants of rational surfaces in terms of indefinite theta functions for any choice of metric.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.06235,
  title  = {Donaldson-Witten theory and indefinite theta functions},
  author = {Georgios Korpas and Jan Manschot},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.06235},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

23 pages + appendices, comments welcome. v2: published version

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:52:09.872Z