arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Philsang Yoo.
We show that every twist of pure supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with gauge group GL(N) can be realized as an open-string field theory in topological string theory. Our approach reinterprets twists of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory as generalized Chern-Simons theories, and identifies topological string backgrounds that produce the corresponding Chern-Simons theories.
We establish an isomorphism between two Frobenius algebra structures, termed CY and LG, on the primitive cohomology of a smooth Calabi--Yau hypersurface in a simplicial Gorenstein toric Fano variety. As an application of our comparison isomorphism, we observe the existence of a Frobenius manifold structure on a finite-dimensional subalgebra of the Jacobian algebra of a homogeneous polynomial which may exhibit a non-compact singularity locus.
We study an SL(2, Z) symmetry of a variant of BCOV theory in three complex dimensions. Using conjectural descriptions of twists of superstrings in terms of topological strings, we argue that this action can be thought of as a version of S-duality that preserves an SU(3)-invariant twist of type IIB supergravity. We analyze how SL(2,Z) acts on various deformations of the holomorphic-topological twist of 4-dimensional N = 4 supersymmetric gauge theory, which come from residual supertranslations and superconformal symmetries, and are of relevance to geometric Langlands theory and gauge-theoretic constructions of the Yangian.
Minimal BCOV theory is a classical field theory which describes a subclass of deformations of the category of perfect complexes on a Calabi-Yau variety. We compute minimal models for $L_\infty$-algebras describing minimal BCOV theory and its variants on flat space and find that they give certain $L_\infty$-extensions of the infinite-dimensional simple Lie superalgebra $\operatorname{SHO}(d|d)$. We apply this computation to compare an $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ action on an odd two-dimensional central extension of $\operatorname{SHO}(3|3)$ first discovered by Kac to an action of $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ on a variant of minimal BCOV theory previously found by the authors.
We describe complex conjugation on the primitive middle-dimensional algebraic de Rham cohomology of a smooth projective hypersurface defined over a number field that admits a real embedding. We use Griffiths' description of the cohomology in terms of a Jacobian ring. The resulting description is algebraic up to transcendental factors explicitly given by certain periods.
We describe the family of supersymmetric twists of $\mathcal N = 4$ super Yang--Mills theory using derived algebraic geometry, starting from holomorphic Chern--Simons theory on $ \mathcal N = 4$ super twistor space. By considering an ansatz for categorical geometric quantization of the family of further twists of a fixed holomorphic twist, we give a quantum field-theoretic synthesis of the categories of twisted D-modules occuring in the quantum geometric Langlands correspondence.
This expository article discusses recent advances in understanding 3-dimensional mirror symmetry and the mathematical definitions of the Higgs and Coulomb branches. This is a slightly expanded version of an article appearing in the Notices of the AMS.
We explain how dispersionless integrable hierarchy in 2d topological field theory arises from the Kodaira-Spencer gravity (BCOV theory). The infinitely many commuting Hamiltonians are given by the current observables associated to the infinite abelian symmetries of the Kodaira-Spencer gravity. We describe a BV framework of effective field theories that leads to the B-model interpretation of dispersionless integrable hierarchy.
We explain how the nilpotent singular support condition introduced into the geometric Langlands conjecture by Arinkin and Gaitsgory arises naturally from the point of view of N = 4 supersymmetric gauge theory. We define what it means in topological quantum field theory to restrict a category of boundary conditions to the full subcategory of objects compatible with a fixed choice of vacuum, both in functorial field theory and in the language of factorization algebras. For B-twisted N = 4 gauge theory with gauge group G, the moduli space of vacua is equivalent to h*/W , and the nilpotent singular support condition arises by restricting to the vacuum 0 in h*/W. We then investigate the categories obtained by restricting to points in larger strata, and conjecture that these categories are equivalent to the geometric Langlands categories with gauge symmetry broken to a Levi subgroup, and furthermore that by assembling such for the groups GL_n for all positive integers n one finds a hidden factorization structure for the geometric Langlands theory.
We develop techniques for describing the derived moduli spaces of solutions to the equations of motion in twists of supersymmetric gauge theories as derived algebraic stacks. We introduce a holomorphic twist of N=4 supersymmetric gauge theory and compute the derived moduli space. We then compute the moduli spaces for the Kapustin-Witten topological twists as its further twists. The resulting spaces for the A- and B-twist are closely related to the de Rham stack of the moduli space of algebraic bundles and the de Rham moduli space of flat bundles, respectively. In particular, we find the unexpected result that the moduli spaces following a topological twist need not be entirely topological, but can continue to capture subtle algebraic structures of interest for the geometric Langlands program.
We define the beta-function of a perturbative quantum field theory in the mathematical framework introduced by Costello -- combining perturbative renormalization and the BV formalism -- as the cohomology class of a certain element in the obstruction-deformation complex. We show that the one-loop beta-function is a well-defined element of the local deformation complex for translation-invariant and classically scale-invariant theories, and furthermore that it is locally constant as a function on the space of classical interactions and computable as a rescaling anomaly, or as the logarithmic one-loop counterterm. We compute the one-loop beta-function in first-order Yang--Mills theory, recovering the famous asymptotic freedom for Yang--Mills in a mathematical context.
We introduce a framework for degenerate classical field theories in the BV formalism, which allows us to discuss many interesting examples of theories which do not admit a Lagrangian description. Further, we study phase spaces and boundary conditions for classical field theories on manifolds with boundary, and from a fixed classical field theory together with a choice of boundary condition, construct a degenerate classical field theory on the boundary. We apply these ideas to many physically interesting examples including the Kapustin-Witten twists of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills, Chern-Simons theory, the chiral Wess-Zumino-Witten model, chiral Toda theory, and a new 3d classical field theory called Whittaker theory.