We review some recent progress in understanding the relation between a six dimensional topological Yang-Mills theory and the enumerative geometry of Calabi-Yau threefolds. The gauge theory localizes on generalized instanton solutions and is conjecturally equivalent to Donaldson-Thomas theory. We evaluate the partition function of the U(N) theory in its Coulomb branch on flat space by employing equivariant localization techniques on its noncommutative deformation. Geometrically this corresponds to a higher dimensional generalization of the ADHM formalism. This formalism can be extended to a generic toric Calabi-Yau.
This paper is a continuation of author's previous work arXiv:1911.07949, where we defined Donaldson-Thomas invariants of quantum Fermat threefolds. In this paper, we study the generic quantum Fermat threefold. We give explicit local models for Hilbert schemes of points as quivers with potential, and compute degree zero Donaldson-Thomas invariants. The result is expressed in terms of certain colored plane partitions.
We study a class of Riemann-Hilbert problems arising naturally in Donaldson-Thomas theory. In certain special cases we show that these problems have unique solutions which can be written explicitly as products of gamma functions. We briefly explain connections with Gromov-Witten theory and exact WKB analysis.
Gromov-Witten, Gopakumar-Vafa, and Donaldson-Thomas invariants of Calabi-Yau threefolds are compared. In certain situations, the Donaldson-Thomas invariants are very easy to handle, sometimes easier than the other invariants. This point is illustrated in several ways, especially by revisiting computations of Gopakumar-Vafa invariants by Katz, Klemm, and Vafa in a rigorous mathematical framework. This note is based on my talk at the 2004 Snowbird Conference on String Geometry.
We introduce geometric structures on the space of stability conditions of a three-dimensional Calabi-Yau category which encode the Donaldson-Thomas invariants of the category. We explain in detail a close analogy between these structures, which we call Joyce structures, and Frobenius structures. In the second half of the paper we give explicit calculations of Joyce structures in three interesting classes of examples.
We develop a virtual cycle approach towards generalized Donaldson-Thomas theory of Calabi-Yau threefolds. Let $\mathcal{M}$ be the moduli stack of Gieseker semistable sheaves of fixed topological type on a Calabi-Yau threefold $W$. We construct an associated Deligne-Mumford stack $\widetilde{\mathcal{M}}$ with an induced semi-perfect obstruction theory of virtual dimension zero and define the generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariant of $W$ via Kirwan blowups to be the degree of the virtual cycle $[\widetilde{\mathcal{M}}]^{\mathrm{vir}}$. We show that it is invariant under deformations of the co…
In this paper, we study non-commutative projective schemes whose associated non-commutative graded algebras are finite over their centers. We study their moduli spaces of stable sheaves, and construct a symmetric obstruction theory in the Calabi-Yau-3 case. This allows us to define Donaldson-Thomas type invariants. We also discuss the simplest examples, called quantum Fermat quintic threefolds.
This paper has been withdrawn, not because of any errors (that we know of), but because rather than presenting our material as a series of 3 papers, as we originally intended, we have now combined them into one long paper, which is "A theory of generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariants", arXiv:0810.5645v3, June 2009, 181 pages, and this paper has been incorporated into that.
We show the existence of semiorthogonal decompositions of Donaldson-Thomas categories for $(-1)$-shifted cotangent derived stacks associated with $Θ$-stratifications on them. Our main result gives an analogue of window theorem for categorical DT theory, which has applications to d-critical analogue of D/K equivalence conjecture, i.e. existence of fully-faithful functors (equivalences) under d-critical flips (flops). As an example of applications, we show the existence of fully-faithful functors of DT categories for Pandharipande-Thomas stable pair moduli spaces under wall-crossing at super-rig…
We compute the motivic Donaldson-Thomas theory of the resolved conifold, in all chambers of the space of stability conditions of the corresponding quiver. The answer is a product formula whose terms depend on the position of the stability vector, generalizing known results for the corresponding numerical invariants. Our formulae imply in particular a motivic form of the DT/PT correspondence for the resolved conifold. The answer for the motivic PT series is in full agreement with the prediction of the refined topological vertex formalism.
We show that the partition functions which enumerate Donaldson-Thomas invariants of local toric Calabi-Yau threefolds without compact divisors can be expressed in terms of specializations of the Schur measure. We also discuss the relevance of the Hall-Littlewood and Jack measures in the context of BPS state counting and study the partition functions at arbitrary points of the Kaehler moduli space. This rewriting in terms of symmetric functions leads to a unitary one-matrix model representation for Donaldson-Thomas theory. We describe explicitly how this result is related to the unitary matrix …
In this paper, we give a construction of the global Chern-Simons functions for toric Calabi-Yau stacks of dimension three using strong exceptional collections. The moduli spaces of sheaves on such stacks can be identified with critical loci of these functions. We give two applications of these functions. First, we prove Joyce's integrality conjecture of generalized DT invariants on local surfaces. Second, we prove a dimension reduction formula for virtual motives, which leads to two recursion formulas for motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants.
We study the reduced Donaldson-Thomas theory of abelian threefolds using Bridgeland stability conditions. The main result is the invariance of the reduced Donaldson-Thomas invariants under all derived autoequivalences, up to explicitly given wall-crossing terms. We also present a numerical criterion for the absence of walls in terms of a discriminant function. For principally polarized abelian threefolds of Picard rank one, the wall-crossing contributions are discussed in detail. The discussion yield evidence for a conjectural formula for curve counting invariants by Bryan, Pandharipande, Yin,…
This paper studies geometric engineering, in the simplest possible case of rank one (Abelian) gauge theory on the affine plane and the resolved conifold. We recall the identification between Nekrasov's partition function and a version of refined Donaldson-Thomas theory, and study the relationship between the underlying vector spaces. Using a purity result, we identify the vector space underlying refined Donaldson-Thomas theory on the conifold geometry as the exterior space of the space of polynomial functions on the affine plane, with the (Lefschetz) SL(2)-action on the threefold side being du…
Let $G\subset SL_2(C)\subset SL_3(C)$ be a finite group. We compute motivic Pandharipande-Thomas and Donaldson-Thomas invariants of the crepant resolution $Hilb^G(C^3)$ of $C^3/G$ generalizing results of Gholampour and Jiang who computed numerical DT/PT invariants using localization techniques. Our formulas rely on the computation of motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants for a special class of quivers with potentials. We show that these motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants are closely related to the polynomials counting absolutely indecomposable quiver representations over finite fields introduce…
We prove two kinds of $\mathbb{Z}/2$-periodic Koszul duality equivalences for triangulated categories of matrix factorizations associated with $(-1)$-shifted cotangents over quasi-smooth affine derived schemes. We use this result to define $\mathbb{Z}/2$-periodic version of Donaldson-Thomas categories for local surfaces, whose $\mathbb{C}^{\ast}$-equivariant version was introduced and developed in the author's previous paper. We compare $\mathbb{Z}/2$-periodic DT category with the $\mathbb{C}^{\ast}$-equivariant one, and deduce wall-crossing equivalences of $\mathbb{Z}/2$-periodic DT categorie…
We introduce the notion of almost perfect obstruction theory on a Deligne-Mumford stack and show that stacks with almost perfect obstruction theories have virtual structure sheaves which are deformation invariant. The main components in the construction are an induced embedding of the coarse moduli sheaf of the intrinsic normal cone into the associated obstruction sheaf stack and the construction of a $K$-theoretic Gysin map for sheaf stacks. We show that many stacks of interest admit almost perfect obstruction theories. As a result, we are able to define virtual structure sheaves and $K$-theo…
Hilbert scheme topological invariants of plane curve singularities are identified to framed threefold stable pair invariants. As a result, the conjecture of Oblomkov and Shende on HOMFLY polynomials of links of plane curve singularities is given a Calabi-Yau threefold interpretation. The motivic Donaldson-Thomas theory developed by M. Kontsevich and the third author then yields natural motivic invariants for algebraic knots. This construction is motivated by previous work of V. Shende, C. Vafa and the first author on the large $N$ duality derivation of the above conjecture.
We show that the categorified cohomological Hall algebra structures on surfaces constructed by Porta-Sala descend to those on Donaldson-Thomas categories on local surfaces introduced in the author's previous paper. A similar argument also shows that Pandharipande-Thomas categories on local surfaces admit actions of categorified COHA for zero dimensional sheaves on surfaces. We also construct annihilator actions of its simple operators, and show that their commutator in the K-theory satisfies the relation similar to the one of Weyl algebras. This result may be regarded as a categorification of …
Let X be the total space of the canonical bundle of P^2. We study the generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariants, defined in the work of Joyce-Song, of the moduli spaces of the 2-dimensional Gieseker semistable sheaves on X with first Chern class equal to k times the class of the zero section of X. When k=1, 2 or 3, and semistability implies stability, we express the invariants in terms of known modular forms. We prove a combinatorial formula for the invariants when k=2 in the presence of the strictly semistable sheaves, and verify the BPS integrality conjecture of Joyce-Song in some cases.
In this paper, we prove a window theorem for categorical Donaldson-Thomas theories on local surfaces as an analogue of window theorem for GIT quotient stacks. We give two applications of our main result. The first one is a proof of wall-crossing equivalences of DT categories for one dimensional stable sheave on local surfaces, under some technical condition on strictly semistable sheaves. The second one is to show the existence of fully-faithful functors from categorical PT theories to categorical MNOP theories, when the curve class is reduced. These results indicate categorifications of wall-…
We rephrase some well-known results in Donaldson-Thomas theory in terms of (formal families of) Frobenius type and CV-structures on a vector bundle in the sense of Hertling. We study these structures in an abstract setting, and prove a convergence result which is relevant to the case of triangulated categories. An application to physical field theory is also briefly discussed.
The aim of this paper is to study an analog of non-commutative Donaldson-Thomas theory corresponding to the refined topological vertex for small crepant resolutions of toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds. We define the invariants using dimer models and provide "wall-crossing" formulas. In particular, we get normalized generating functions which are unchanged under "wall-crossing".
We define a new type of Hall algebras associated e.g. with quivers with polynomial potentials. The main difference with the conventional definition is that we use cohomology of the stack of representations instead of constructible sheaves or functions. In order to take into account the potential we introduce a generalization of theory of mixed Hodge structures, related to exponential integrals. Generating series of our Cohomological Hall algebra is a generalization of the motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants introduced in arXiv:0811.2435. Also we prove a new integrality property of motivic Dona…
Motivated by the S-duality conjecture, we study the Donaldson-Thomas invariants of the 2 dimensional Gieseker stable sheaves on a threefold. These sheaves are supported on the fibers of a nonsingular threefold X fibered over a nonsingular curve. In the case where X is a K3 fibration, we express these invariants in terms of the Euler characteristic of the Hilbert scheme of points on the K3 fiber and the Noether-Lefschetz numbers of the fibration. We prove that a certain generating function of these invariants is a vector modular form of weight -3/2 as predicted in S-duality.
We establish a geometric interpretation of orientifold Donaldson-Thomas invariants of $σ$-symmetric quivers with involution. More precisely, we prove that the cohomological orientifold Donaldson-Thomas invariant is isomorphic to the rational Chow group of the moduli space of $σ$-stable self-dual quiver representations. As an application we prove that the Chow Betti numbers of moduli spaces of stable $m$-tuples in classical Lie algebras can be computed numerically. We also prove a cohomological wall-crossing formula relating semistable Hall modules for different stabilities.
The ADHM construction establishes a one-to-one correspondence between framed torsion free sheaves on the projective plane and stable framed representations of a quiver with relations in the category of complex vector spaces. This paper studies the geometry of moduli spaces of representations of the same quiver with relations in the abelian category of coherent sheaves on a smooth complex projective curve $X$. In particular it is proven that this moduli space is virtually smooth and related byrelative Beilinson spectral sequence to the curve counting construction via stable pairs of Pandharipan…
Given a quiver algebra A with relations defined by a superpotential, this paper defines a set of invariants of A counting framed cyclic A-modules, analogous to rank-1 Donaldson-Thomas invariants of Calabi-Yau threefolds. For the special case when A is the non-commutative crepant resolution of the threefold ordinary double point, it is proved using torus localization that the invariants count certain pyramid-shaped partition-like configurations, or equivalently infinite dimer configurations in the square dimer model with a fixed boundary condition. The resulting partition function admits an inf…
The notion of a Joyce structure was introduced in arXiv:1912.06504 to describe the geometric structure on the space of stability conditions of a CY3 category naturally encoded by the Donaldson-Thomas invariants. In this paper we show that a Joyce structure on a complex manifold defines a complex hyperkähler structure on the total space of its tangent bundle, and give a characterisation of the resulting hyperkähler metrics in geometric terms.
This is a survey of the book arXiv:0810.5645 with Yinan Song. Let X be a Calabi-Yau 3-fold over C. The Donaldson-Thomas invariants of X are integers DT^a(t) which count stable sheaves with Chern character a on X, with respect to a Gieseker stability condition t. They are defined only for Chern characters a for which there are no strictly semistable sheaves on X. They have the good property that they are unchanged under deformations of X. Their behaviour under change of stability condition t was not understood until now. We discuss "generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariants" \bar{DT}^a(t). These …
We compute the Donaldson-Thomas invariants of a local elliptic surface with section. We introduce a new computational technique which is a mixture of motivic and toric methods. This allows us to write the partition function for the invariants in terms of the topological vertex. Utilizing identities for the topological vertex proved in arXiv:1603.05271, we derive product formulas for the partition functions. The connected version of the partition function is written in terms of Jacobi forms. In the special case where the elliptic surface is a K3 surface, we get a derivation of the Katz-Klemm-Va…
We construct noncommutative Donaldson-Thomas invariants associated with abelian orbifold singularities by analysing the instanton contributions to a six-dimensional topological gauge theory. The noncommutative deformation of this gauge theory localizes on noncommutative instantons which can be classified in terms of three-dimensional Young diagrams with a colouring of boxes according to the orbifold group. We construct a moduli space for these gauge field configurations which allows us to compute its virtual numbers via the counting of representations of a quiver with relations. The quiver enc…
A degeneration formula of Donaldson-Thomas theory on local Calabi-Yau 4-folds
Institute of Mathematics & State Key Laboratory of Mathematical Sciences, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院数学与系统科学研究院）；School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学数学与统计学院）；School of Mathematical Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学数学科学学院）
This article provides a summary of arXiv:1701.08899 and arXiv:1701.08902 where the authors studied the enumerative geometry of nested Hilbert schemes of points and curves on algebraic surfaces and their connections to threefold theories, and in particular relevant Donaldson-Thomas, Vafa-Witten and Seiberg-Witten theories.
In arXiv:0907.3784, we introduced a variant of non-commutative Donaldson-Thomas theory in a combinatorial way, which is related with topological vertex by a wall-crossing phenomenon. In this paper, we (1) provide an alternative definition in a geometric way, (2) show that the two definitions agree with each other and (3) compute the invariants using the vertex operator method, following Okounkov-Reshetikhin-Vafa and Young. The stability parameter in the geometric definition determines the order of the vertex operators and hence we can understand the wall-crossing formula in non-commutative Don…
This is a short summary of main results of our paper arXiv:0811.2435 where the concept of motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariant was introduced. It also contains a discussion of some open questions from the loc.cit., in particular, the geometry related to the split attractor flow.
We study the relation between Donaldson-Thomas theory of Calabi-Yau threefolds and a six-dimensional topological Yang-Mills theory. Our main example is the topological U(N) gauge theory on flat space in its Coulomb branch. To evaluate its partition function we use equivariant localization techniques on its noncommutative deformation. As a result the gauge theory localizes on noncommutative instantons which can be classified in terms of N-coloured three-dimensional Young diagrams. We give to these noncommutative instantons a geometrical description in terms of certain stable framed coherent she…
Let X be a Calabi-Yau 3-fold over C. The Donaldson-Thomas invariants of X are integers DT^a(t) which count stable sheaves with Chern character a on X, with respect to a Gieseker stability condition t. They are defined only for Chern characters a for which there are no strictly semistable sheaves on X. They have the good property that they are unchanged under deformations of X. Their behaviour under change of stability condition t was not understood until now. This book defines and studies a generalization of Donaldson-Thomas invariants. Our new invariants \bar{DT}^a(t) are rational numbers, de…
We introduce a new class of representations of the cohomological Hall algebras of Kontsevich and Soibelman, which we call cohomological Hall modules, or CoHM for short. These representations are constructed from self-dual representations of a quiver with contravariant involution $σ$ and provide a mathematical model for the space of BPS states in orientifold string theory. We use the CoHM to define a generalization of the cohomological Donaldson-Thomas theory of quivers which allows the quiver representations to have orthogonal and symplectic structure groups. The associated invariants are call…
Motivated by the counting of BPS states in string theory with orientifolds, we study moduli spaces of self-dual representations of a quiver with contravariant involution. We develop Hall module techniques to compute the number of points over finite fields of moduli stacks of semistable self-dual representations. Wall-crossing formulas relating these counts for different choices of stability parameters recover the wall-crossing of orientifold BPS/Donaldson-Thomas invariants predicted in the physics literature. In finite type examples the wall-crossing formulas can be reformulated in terms of id…
We present some computations of higher rank refined Donaldson-Thomas invariants on local curve geometries, corresponding to local D6-D2-D0 or D4-D2-D0 configurations. A refined wall-crossing formula for invariants with higher D6 or D4 ranks is derived and verified to agree with the existing formulas under the unrefined limit. Using the formula, refined invariants on the $(-1,-1)$ and $(-2,0)$ local rational curve with higher D6 or D4 ranks are computed.
We prove the flow tree formula conjectured by Alexandrov and Pioline which computes Donaldson-Thomas invariants of quivers with potentials in terms of a smaller set of attractor invariants. This result is obtained as a particular case of a more general flow tree formula reconstructing a consistent scattering diagram from its initial walls.
Oberdieck and Pandharipande conjectured that the curve counting invariants of $S\times E$, the product of a $K3$ surface and an elliptic curve, is given by minus the reciprocal of the Igusa cusp form of weight 10. For a fixed primitive curve class in $S$ of square $2h-2$, their conjecture predicts that the corresponding partition functions are given by meromorphic Jacobi forms of weight $-10$ and index $h-1$. We calculate the partition functions for primitive classes of square -2 and of square 0. Our computation uses reduced Donaldson-Thomas invariants which are defined as the Behrend function…
This paper is motivated by the question of how motivic Donaldson--Thomas invariants behave in families. We compute the invariants for some simple families of noncommutative Calabi--Yau threefolds, defined by quivers with homogeneous potentials. These families give deformation quantizations of affine three-space, the resolved conifold, and the resolution of the transversal $A_n$-singularity. It turns out that their invariants are generically constant, but jump at special values of the deformation parameter, such as roots of unity. The corresponding generating series are written in closed form, …
We develope $\mathbb{C}^{\ast}$-equivariant categorical Donaldson-Thomas theory for local surfaces, i.e. the total spaces of canonical line bundles on smooth projective surfaces. We introduce $\mathbb{C}^{\ast}$-equivariant DT categories for local surfaces as Verdier quotients of derived categories of coherent sheaves on derived moduli stacks of coherent sheaves on surfaces, by subcategories of objects whose singular supports are contained in unstable loci. Via Koszul duality, our construction may be regarded as certain gluing of $\mathbb{C}^{\ast}$-equivariant derived categories of factorizat…
We study tilting for the heart A of the canonical t-structure of the finite-dimensional derived category of the Ginzburg algebra for a quiver with potential (Q,W). We give conditions on that the stable objects for a central charge on A define a sequence of simple tilts from A to A[-1]. On that conditions the refined Donaldson-Thomas invariant associated to (Q,W) is independent of the chosen central charge.
Given a smooth complex threefold X, we define the virtual motive of the Hilbert scheme of n points on X. In the case when X is Calabi-Yau, this gives a motivic refinement of the n-point degree zero Donaldson-Thomas invariant of X. The key example is affine three-space, where the Hilbert scheme can be expressed as the critical locus of a regular function on a smooth variety, and its virtual motive is defined in terms of the Denef-Loeser motivic nearby fiber. A crucial technical result asserts that if a function is equivariant with respect to a suitable torus action, its motivic nearby fiber is …
We discuss semicanonical bases from the point of view of Cohomological Hall algebras via the "dimensional reduction" from 3-dimensional Calabi-Yau categories to 2-dimensional ones. Also, we discuss the notion of motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants (as defined by M. Kontsevich and Y. Soibelman) in the framework of 2-dimensional Calabi-Yau categories. In particular we propose a conjecture which allows one to define Kac polynomials for a 2-dimensional Calabi-Yau category (this is a theorem of S. Mozgovoy in the case of preprojective algebras).
Donaldson-Thomas theory on a Calabi-Yau can be described in terms of a certain six-dimensional cohomological gauge theory. We introduce a certain class of defects in this gauge theory which generalize surface defects in four dimensions. These defects are associated with divisors and are defined by prescribing certain boundary conditions for the gauge fields. We discuss generalized instanton moduli spaces when the theory is defined with a defect and propose a generalization of Donaldson-Thomas invariants. These invariants arise by studying torsion free coherent sheaves on Calabi-Yau varieties w…
We derive two multivariate generating functions for three-dimensional Young diagrams (also called plane partitions). The variables correspond to a colouring of the boxes according to a finite Abelian subgroup G of SO(3). We use the vertex operator methods of Okounkov--Reshetikhin--Vafa for the easy case G = Z/n; to handle the considerably more difficult case G=Z/2 x Z/2, we will also use a refinement of the author's recent q--enumeration of pyramid partitions. In the appendix, we relate the diagram generating functions to the Donaldson-Thomas partition functions of the orbifold C^3/G. We find …
