Geometry and String Theory
Ideas_Spring_2011 (Rev #3)

Tentative calendar for Spring 2011

Jan 19: “The Map” (David Ben-Zvi)

Jan 26: A and B branes (Braxton Collier)

Feb 2: coisotropic branes (Marco Gualtieri)

Feb 9: canonical coisotropic brane (Pavel Safronov)

Feb 16: Nekrasov-Witten part 1 (Andy Neitzke)

Feb 23: Nekrasov-Witten part 2 (Andy Neitzke)

Mar 2: ???

Mar 9: ???

Possible references for Spring 2011

Chern-Simons

Witten, Edward. “Quantum field theory and the Jones polynomial,” Commun. Math. Phys. 121 (1989) 351.

Witten, Edward. “Analytic Continuation Of Chern-Simons Theory,” 1001.2933.

N=4 super Yang-Mills

Sen, Ashoke. “Dyon-monopole bound states, selfdual harmonic forms on the multi-monopole moduli space, and SL(2,Z) invariance in string theory,” Phys. Lett. B329 (1994) 217-221, hep-th/9402032.

Vafa, Cumrun and Witten, Edward. “A strong coupling test of S duality,” Nucl. Phys. B431 (1994) 3-77, hep-th/9408074.

Kapustin, Anton and Witten, Edward. “Electric-magnetic duality and the geometric Langlands program,” hep-th/0604151.

Gaiotto, Davide and Witten, Edward. “Supersymmetric Boundary Conditions in N=4 Super Yang-Mills Theory,” 0804.2902.

Gaiotto, Davide and Witten, Edward. “Janus Configurations, Chern-Simons Couplings, And The Theta-Angle in N=4 Super Yang-Mills Theory,” JHEP 06 (2010) 097, 0804.2907.

Gaiotto, Davide and Witten, Edward. “S-Duality of Boundary Conditions In N=4 Super Yang-Mills Theory,” 0807.3720.

The (2,0) theory

Witten, Edward. “On the conformal field theory of the Higgs branch,” JHEP 07 (1997) 003, hep-th/9707093.

Aharony, Ofer and Berkooz, Micha and Seiberg, Nathan. “Light-cone description of (2,0) superconformal theories in six dimensions,” Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2 (1998) 119-153, hep-th/9712117.

Witten, Edward. “Conformal Field Theory In Four And Six Dimensions,” 0712.0157.

Witten, Edward. “Geometric Langlands From Six Dimensions,” 0905.2720.

String theory constructions of the (2,0) theory

Witten, Edward. “Some comments on string dynamics,” hep-th/9507121.

Strominger, Andrew. “Open p-branes,” Phys. Lett. B383 (1996) 44-47, hep-th/9512059.

Topological strings and Chern-Simons

Witten, Edward. “Chern-Simons gauge theory as a string theory,” Prog. Math. 133 (1995) 637-678, hep-th/9207094.

Ooguri, Hirosi and Vafa, Cumrun. “Knot invariants and topological strings,” Nucl. Phys. B577 (2000) 419-438, hep-th/9912123.

Gukov, Sergei and Schwarz, Albert and Vafa, Cumrun. “Khovanov-Rozansky Homology and Topological Strings,” hep-th/0412243.

N=2 theories (relevant only to the case where the 3-manifold is a circle bundle over a Riemann surface and reverse cell phone lookup)

Gaiotto, Davide and Moore, Gregory W. and Neitzke, Andrew. “Wall-crossing, Hitchin Systems, and the WKB Approximation,” 0907.3987.

Gaiotto, Davide. “N=2 dualities,” 0904.2715.

Alday, Luis F. and Gaiotto, Davide and Tachikawa, Yuji. “Liouville Correlation Functions from Four-dimensional Gauge Theories,” 0906.3219.

Nekrasov, Nikita A. and Shatashvili, Samson L. “Quantization of Integrable Systems and Four Dimensional Gauge Theories,” 0908.4052.

Nekrasov, Nikita and Witten, Edward. “The Omega Deformation, Branes, Integrability, and Liouville Theory,” 1002.0888.

Gaiotto, Davide and Moore, Gregory W. and Neitzke, Andrew. “Framed BPS States,” 1006.0146.