Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

205 submissions , 163 unreviewed
5,082 questions , 2,232 unanswered
5,353 answers , 22,789 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

  Intuition for Homological Mirror Symmetry

+ 5 like - 0 dislike
1063 views

first of all, I need to confess my ignorance with respect to any physics since I'm a mathematician. I'm interested in the physical intuition of the Langlands program, therefore I need to understand what physicists think about homological mirror symmetry. This question is related to this other one Intuition for S-duality.

As I have heard, the mirror symmetry can be derived from S-duality by picking a topological sector using an element of the super Lie algebra of the Lorentz group $Q$, such that things commutes with $Q$, $Q^2 = 0$ and some other properties that I actually don't understand. Then to construct this $Q$, one would need to recover the action of $\text{Spin}(6)$ (because the dimension 4 is a reduction of a 10 dimensional theory? is this correct?) and there are different ways of doing this. Anyway, passing through all the details, this is a twisting of the theory giving a families of topological field theory parametrized by $\mathbb{P}^1$.

Compactifying this $M_4 = \Sigma \times X$ gives us a topological $\sigma$-model with values in Hitchin moduli space (that is hyperkähler). The Hitchin moduli space roughly can be described as semi-stable flat $G$ bundles or vector bundles with a Higgs field. However since the Hitchin moduli is kähler, there will be just two $\sigma$-models: A-models and B-models. I don't want to write more details, so, briefly there is an equivalence between sympletic structures and complex structures (for more details see http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.2747v1.pdf).

So the main point is that Lagrangian submanifolds (of a Kähler-Einstein manifold) with a unitary local system should be dual to flat bundles.

1) But what's the physical interpretation of a Lagrangian submanifold with a unitary local system?

2) What's the physical intuition for A-models and B-models (or exchanging "models" by "branes")?

3) What's the physical interpretation of this interplay between complex structures and sympletic ones (coming from the former one)?

Thanks in advance.


This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2015-03-17 04:42 (UTC), posted by SE-user user40276

asked Mar 6, 2015 in Theoretical Physics by user40276 (140 points) [ revision history ]
edited Mar 17, 2015 by dimension10

Re 'And, then the theory would be non-perturbative, since it would be defined "for all" τ, because amplitudes are computed with an expansion in power series in τ':

Actually, to a physicist, such a power-series expansion is the hallmark of (the outcome of) a perturbative theory: Such power series typically correspond to some perturbation calculated to (arbitrarily) high order. A base in the coefficient corresponds to a physical coupling constant and causes such approaches to become invalid for large (e.g. unity) coupling constants as the power series no longer converges.

Please take this comment with a grain of salt: I am myself from a foreign field (to theoretical physics) as I am a mere quantumoptics experimental physicist curious about expanding my mental horizon. This is just my first "that's usually like this" association.

The answer to this question would easily take thousands of pages. A first thousand is the Clay math book "Mirror Symmetry".

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\varnothing$ysicsOverflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...