We present the scalar moduli stabilization from the perspective of the real intrinsic geometry. In this paper, we describe the physical nature of the vacuum moduli fluctuations of an arbitrary Fayet configuration. For finitely many abelian scalar fields, we show that the framework of the real intrinsic geometry investigates the mixing between the marginal and threshold vacua. Interestingly, we find that the phenomena of wall crossing and the search of the stable vacuum configurations, pertaining to $D$-term and $F$-term scalar moduli, can be accomplished for the abelian charges. For given vacuum expectation values of the moduli scalars, we provide phenomenological aspects of the vacuum fluctuations and phase transitions in the supersymmetry breaking configurations.
We study moduli-dominated SUSY breaking within the framework of string models. This type of SUSY breaking in general leads to non-universal soft masses, i.e. soft scalar masses and gaugino masses. Further gauginos are lighter than sfermions. This non-universality has phenomenologically important implications. We investigate radiative electroweak symmetry breaking in the mass spectrum derived from moduli-dominated SUSY breaking, where the lightest chargino and neutralino are almost gauginos. Moreover, constraints from the branching ratio of $b \to s γ$ and the relic abundance of the LSP are als…
We test a recently proposed wall-crossing formula for the change of the Hilbert space of BPS states in d=4,N=2 theories. We study decays of D4D2D0 systems into pairs of D4D2D0 systems and we show how the wall-crossing formula reproduces results of Goettsche and Yoshioka on wall-crossing behavior of the moduli of slope-stable holomorphic bundles over holomorphic surfaces. Our comparison shows very clearly that the moduli space of the D4D2D0 system on a rigid surface in a Calabi-Yau is not the same as the moduli space of torsion free sheaves, even when worldhseet instantons are neglected. Moreov…
We study the interplay between wall-crossing in four-dimensional gauge theory and instanton contributions to the moduli space metric of the same theory on $\mathbb{R}^{3}\times S^{1}$. We consider $\mathcal{N}=2$ SUSY Yang--Mills with gauge group SU(n) and focus on walls of marginal stability which extend to weak coupling. By comparison with explicit field theory results we verify the Kontsevich--Soibelman formula for the change in the BPS spectrum at these walls and check the smoothness of the metric in the corresponding compactified theory. We also verify in detail the predictions for the on…
This is the second of series of papers studyig moduli spaces of a certain class of coherent sheaves, which we call stable perverse coherent sheaves, on the blow-up of a projective surface at a point. The followings are main results of this paper: a) We describe the wall-crossing between moduli spaces caused by twisting of the line bundle associated with the exceptional divisor. b) We give the formula for virtual Hodge numbers of moduli spaces of stable perverse coherent sheaves. Moreover we also give proofs of the followings which we observed in a special case in arXiv:0802.3120: c) The moduli…
We formulate supersymmetric low energy dynamics for BPS dyons in strongly-coupled N=2 Seiberg-Witten theories, and derive wall-crossing formulae thereof. For BPS states made up of a heavy core state and n probe (halo) dyons around it, we derive a reliable supersymmetric moduli dynamics with 3n bosonic coordinates and 4n fermionic superpartners. Attractive interactions are captured via a set of supersymmetric potential terms, whose detail depends only on the charges and the special Kaehler data of the underlying N=2 theories. The small parameters that control the approximation are not electric …
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 explore the physics of two-body decay of BPS states using semiclassical analysis to construct explicit solutions that illustrate the main features of wall crossing, for both ordinary and framed BPS states. In particular we recover the primitive wall-crossing formula from an asymptotic analysis of certain Dirac-type operators on monopole moduli spaces. Along the way we give an asymptotic metric for the moduli space of singular monopoles, analogous to the Gibbons-Manton and Lee-Weinberg-Yi metrics for the moduli space of smooth monopoles, and we find evidence for the existence of stable non-B…
We study the WKB periods for the third order ordinary differential equation (ODE) with polynomial potential, which is obtained by the Nekrasov-Shatashvili limit of ($A_2,A_N$) Argyres-Douglas theory in the Omega background. In the minimal chamber of the moduli space, we derive the Y-system and the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz (TBA) equations by using the ODE/IM correspondence. The exact WKB periods are identified with the Y-functions. Varying the moduli parameters of the potential, the wall-crossing of the TBA equations occurs. We study the process of the wall-crossing from the minimal chamber t…
The moduli dependence of D4-branes on a Calabi-Yau manifold is studied using attractor flow trees, in the large volume limit of the Kahler cone. One of the moduli dependent existence criteria of flow trees is the positivity of the flow parameters along its edges. It is shown that the sign of the flow parameters can be determined iteratively as function of the initial moduli, without explicit calculation of the flow of the moduli in the tree. Using this result, an indefinite quadratic form, which appears in the expression for the D4-D2-D0 BPS mass in the large volume limit, is proven to be posi…
This article represents the author's PhD thesis. It describes moduli stabilisation in IIB string theory and applications to phenomenological topics. The first half of the thesis starts with an introductory review. It continues with an account of the statistics of complex structure moduli stabilisation before moving to Kahler moduli stabilisation. It describes in detail the large-volumes models and justifies the assumptions used in their construction. The second half of the thesis is concerned with applications to phenomenological topics. These include supersymmetry breaking and soft terms, inf…
N=2 Seiberg-Witten theories allow an interesting interplay between the Argyres-Douglas loci, singularity structures and wall-crossing formulae. In this paper we investigate this connection by first studying the singularity structures of hyper-elliptic Seiberg-Witten curves for pure N=2 gauge theories with SU(r+1) and Sp(2r) gauge groups, and propose new methods to locate the Argyres-Douglas loci in the moduli space, where multiple mutually non-local BPS states become massless. In a region of the moduli space, we compute dyon charges for all 2r+2 and 2r+1 massless dyons for SU(r+1) and Sp(2r) g…
We study moduli space stabilization of a class of BPS configurations from the perspective of the real intrinsic Riemannian geometry. Our analysis exhibits a set of implications towards the stability of the D-term potentials, defined for a set of abelian scalar fields. In particular, we show that the nature of marginal and threshold walls of stabilities may be investigated by real geometric methods. Interestingly, we find that the leading order contributions may easily be accomplished by translations of the Fayet parameter. Specifically, we notice that the various possible linear, planar, hyper…
We study the BPS invariants for local del Pezzo surfaces, which can be obtained as the signed Euler characteristic of the moduli spaces of stable one-dimensional sheaves on the surface $S$. We calculate the Poincare polynomials of the moduli spaces for the curve classes $β$ having arithmetic genus at most 2. We formulate a conjecture that these Poincare polynomials are divisible by the Poincare polynomials of $((-K_S).β-1)$-dimensional projective space. This conjecture motivates upcoming work on log BPS numbers.
We introduce the notion of Wall-Crossing Structure and discuss it in several examples including complex integrable systems, Donaldson-Thomas invariants and Mirror Symmetry. For a big class of non-compact Calabi-Yau 3-folds we construct complex integrable systems of Hitchin type with the base given by the moduli space of deformations of those 3-folds. Then Donaldson-Thomas invariants of the Fukaya category of such a Calabi-Yau 3-fold can be (conjecturally) described in two more ways: in terms of the attractor flow on the base of the corresponding complex integrable system and in terms of the sk…
When formulated in twistor space, the D-instanton corrected hypermultiplet moduli space in N=2 string vacua and the Coulomb branch of rigid N=2 gauge theories on $R^3 \times S^1$ are strikingly similar and, to a large extent, dictated by consistency with wall-crossing. We elucidate this similarity by showing that these two spaces are related under a general duality between, on one hand, quaternion-Kahler manifolds with a quaternionic isometry and, on the other hand, hyperkahler manifolds with a rotational isometry, further equipped with a hyperholomorphic circle bundle with a connection. We sh…
The Standard Model is the low-energy limit of a microscopic theory which includes extra dimensions and new symmetries. A part of my thesis consisted in constructing a new class of models with two extra dimensions. We showed that these models can drive a dynamical symmetry breaking in four dimensions. In particular, they are dual to models with four fermions which need a non-perturbative treatment. We also studied supersymmetry and its local version, supergravity, in string theory inspired models with ten dimensions. Extra fields called moduli are present after dimensional reduction and are gen…
We study the effective field theory of KKLT and LVS moduli stabilisation scenarios coupled to an anti-D3-brane at the tip of a warped throat. We describe the presence of the anti-brane in terms of a nilpotent goldstino superfield in a supersymmetric effective field theory. The introduction of this superfield produces a term that can lead to a de Sitter minimum. We fix the Kaehler moduli dependence of the nilpotent field couplings by matching this term with the anti-D3-brane uplifting contribution. The main result of this paper is the computation, within this EFT, of the soft supersymmetry brea…
The BPS state spectrum in four-dimensional gauge theories or string vacua with N=2 supersymmetries is well known to depend on the values of the parameters or moduli at spatial infinity. The BPS index is locally constant, but discontinuous across real codimension-one walls where some of the BPS states decay. By postulating that BPS states are bound states of more elementary constituents carrying their own degrees of freedom and interacting via supersymmetric quantum mechanics, we provide a physically transparent derivation of the universal wall-crossing formula which governs the jump of the ind…
The number of BPS bound states of D-branes on a Calabi-Yau manifold depends on two sets of data, the BPS charges and the stability conditions. For D0 and D2-branes bound to a single D6-brane wrapping a Calabi-Yau 3-fold X, both are naturally related to the Kahler moduli space M(X). We construct unitary one-matrix models which count such BPS states for a class of toric Calabi-Yau manifolds at infinite 't Hooft coupling. The matrix model for the BPS counting on X turns out to give the topological string partition function for another Calabi-Yau manifold Y, whose Kahler moduli space M(Y) contains…
The invariants of rank 2 Joyce-Song semistable pairs over a Calabi-Yau threefold were computed in arXiv:1101.2252, using the wall-crossing formula of Joyce-Song and Kontsevich-Soibelman. Such wall-crossing computations often depend on the combinatorial properties of certain elements of a Hall-algebra (these are the stack functions defined by Joyce). These combinatorial computations become immediately complicated and hard to carry out, when studying higher rank stable pairs with rank$>2$. The main purpose of this article is to introduce an independent approach to computation of rank 2 stable pa…
BPS states in N=4 supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theories in four dimensions can be represented as planar string networks with ends lying on D3-branes. We introduce several protected indices which capture information on the spectrum and various quantum numbers of these states, give their wall crossing formula and describe how using the wall crossing formula we can compute all the indices at all points in the moduli space.
We calculate the leading weak-coupling instanton contribution to the moduli-space metric of N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with gauge group SU(2) compactified on R^3 x S^1. The results are in precise agreement with the semiclassical expansion of the exact metric recently conjectured by Gaiotto, Moore and Neitzke based on considerations related to wall-crossing in the corresponding four-dimensional theory.
We consider BPS states in a large class of d=4, N=2 field theories, obtained by reducing six-dimensional (2,0) superconformal field theories on Riemann surfaces, with defect operators inserted at points of the Riemann surface. Further dimensional reduction on S^1 yields sigma models, whose target spaces are moduli spaces of Higgs bundles on Riemann surfaces with ramification. In the case where the Higgs bundles have rank 2, we construct canonical Darboux coordinate systems on their moduli spaces. These coordinate systems are related to one another by Poisson transformations associated to BPS s…
We study the BPS spectrum of four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with gauge group $SU(2)$ and a massive adjoint hypermultiplet, which has an extremely intricate structure with infinite spectrum in all chambers of its Coulomb moduli space, and is not well understood. We build on previous results by employing the BPS quiver description of the spectrum, and explore the qualitative features in detail using numerical techniques. We find novel and unexpected behaviour in the form of wall-crossings involving interactions between BPS particles with negative electric-magne…
We give a physical explanation of the Kontsevich-Soibelman wall-crossing formula for the BPS spectrum in Seiberg-Witten theories. In the process we give an exact description of the BPS instanton corrections to the hyperkahler metric of the moduli space of the theory on R^3 x S^1. The wall-crossing formula reduces to the statement that this metric is continuous. Our construction of the metric uses a four-dimensional analogue of the two-dimensional tt* equations.
This paper summarizes recent developments in the theory of Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) state counting and the wall crossing phenomena, emphasizing in particular the role of the statistical mechanical model of crystal melting. This paper is divided into two parts, which are closely related to each other. In the first part, we discuss the statistical mechanical model of crystal melting counting BPS states. Each of the BPS state contributing to the BPS index is in one-to-one correspondence with a configuration of a molten crystal, and the statistical partition function of the melting cry…
We study $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric Yang--Mills theory in four dimensions and then compactify it on $\mathbb{R}^{3}\times S^{1}$. The gauge symmetry of the theory is broken by a vacuum expectation value of the scalar field, which parametrises the moduli space. The spectrum of BPS states, carrying electric and magnetic charges, is piece-wise constant, changing only when the vacuum expectation value crosses the so-called walls of marginal stability. Kontsevich and Soibelman proposed an algebraic construction relating BPS spectra on both sides of a wall of marginal stability. These formulae a…
Recently, using supergravity analysis, a hyperbolic reflection group was found to underlie the structure of wall-crossing, or the discontinuous moduli dependence of the supersymmetric index due to the presence of walls of marginal stability, of the BPS dyons in the N=4, d=4 compactification. In this paper we work in the regime where four-dimensional gravity decouples and we show how the presence of such a group structure can be easily understood as a consequence of the supersymmetry of a system of (p,q) five-brane network, or equivalently the holomorphicity of the Riemann surface wrapped by th…
We study the quantum effects on the Coulomb branch of N=2 SU(2) supersymmetric Yang-Mills with fundamental matters compactified on R^3 x S^1, and extract the explicit perturbative and leading non-perturbative corrections to the moduli space metric predicted from the recent work of Gaiotto, Moore and Neitzke on wall-crossing [1]. We verify the predicted metric by computing the leading weak coupling instanton contribution to the four fermion correlation using standard field theory techniques, and demonstrate perfect agreement. We also demonstrate how previously known three dimensional quantities…
We study the twisted index of 3d $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric gauge theories on $S^1 \times Σ$ in the presence of a real FI parameter deformation. This parameter induces a 1d FI parameter for the effective supersymmetric quantum mechanics on $S^1$. Using supersymmetric localisation, the twisted index can be expressed as a contour integral. We show that the contour prescription is modified in the presence of the 1d FI parameter, leading to wall-crossing phenomena for the twisted index. In particular, we derive a general wall-crossing formula for abelian gauge theories. We also examine the ori…
In this paper, we generalize a mathematical definition of Gopakumar-Vafa (GV) invariants on Calabi-Yau 3-folds introduced by Maulik and the author, using an analogue of BPS sheaves introduced by Davison-Meinhardt on the coarse moduli spaces of one dimensional twisted semistable sheaves with arbitrary holomorphic Euler characteristics. We show that our generalized GV invariants are independent of twisted stability conditions, and conjecture that they are also independent of holomorphic Euler characteristics, so that they define the same GV invariants. As an application, we will show the flop tr…
We introduce moduli spaces of stable perverse coherent systems on small crepant resolutions of Calabi-Yau 3-folds and consider their Donaldson-Thomas type counting invariants. The stability depends on the choice of a component (= a chamber) in the complement of finitely many lines (= walls) in the plane. We determine all walls and compute generating functions of invariants for all choices of chambers when the Calabi-Yau is the resolved conifold. For suitable choices of chambers, our invariants are specialized to Donaldson-Thomas, Pandharipande-Thomas and Szendroi invariants.
We study the wall-crossing phenomena of BPS D4-D2-D0 states on the conifold and orbifold C^2/Z_2, from the viewpoint of the quiver quantum mechanics on the D-branes. The Kahler moduli dependence of the BPS index is translated into the FI parameter dependence of the Witten index. The wall-crossing phenomena are related to the Seiberg dualities of the quiver quantum mechanics. All the differences from the D6-D2-D0 case arise from the additional superpotential and "anti-quark" induced by the D4-brane. When the D-branes are on the conifold, the flop transition changes the duality cascade. When the…
We initiate the study of wall crossing phenomena in orientifolds of local toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds from a topological string perspective. For this purpose, we define a notion of real Donaldson-Thomas partition function at the large volume, orbifold and non-commutative point in Kaehler moduli space. As a byproduct, we refine the constant map contribution to the partition function of the real topological string on a local toric background. We conjecture the general relation between the real large volume and real non-commutative/orbifold Donaldson-Thomas partition function of orientifolds of loca…
We study BPS bound states of D0 and D2 branes on a single D6 brane wrapping a Calabi-Yau 3-fold X. When X has no compact 4-cyles, the BPS bound states are organized into a free field Fock space, whose generators correspond to BPS states of spinning M2 branes in M-theory compactified down to 5 dimensions by a Calabi-Yau 3-fold X. The generating function of the D-brane bound states is expressed as a reduction of the square of the topological string partition function, in all chambers of the Kahler moduli space.
