The Origin of Calabi-Yau Crystals in BPS States Counting

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-t...

We develop a systematic and efficient method of counting single-trace and multi-trace BPS operators with two supercharges, for world-volume gauge theories of $N$ D-brane probes for both $N \to \infty$ and finite $N$. The techniques are applicable to generic singularities, orbifold, toric, non-toric, complete intersections, et cetera, even to geometries whose precise field theory duals are not yet known. The so-called ``Plethystic Exponential'' provides a simple bridge between...

We survey geometrical and especially combinatorial aspects of generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariants (also called BPS invariants) for toric Calabi-Yau manifolds, emphasizing the role of plane partitions and their generalizations in the recently proposed crystal melting model. We also comment on equivalence with a vicious walker model and the matrix model representation of the partition function.

It has recently been shown that the statistical mechanics of crystal melting maps to A-model topological string amplitudes on non-compact Calabi-Yau spaces. In this note we establish a one to one correspondence between two and three dimensional crystal melting configurations and certain BPS black holes given by branes wrapping collapsed cycles on the orbifolds C^2/Z_n and C^3/Z_n x Z_n in the large n limit. The ranks of gauge groups in the associated gauged quiver quantum mec...

BPS quivers for N=2 SU(N) gauge theories are derived via geometric engineering from derived categories of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds. While the outcome is in agreement of previous low energy constructions, the geometric approach leads to several new results. An absence of walls conjecture is formulated for all values of N, relating the field theory BPS spectrum to large radius D-brane bound states. Supporting evidence is presented as explicit computations of BPS degeneracies...

We study BPS spectra of D-branes on local Calabi-Yau threefolds $\mathcal{O}(-p)\oplus\mathcal{O}(p-2)\to \mathbb{P}^1$ with $p=0,1$, corresponding to $\mathbb{C}^3/\mathbb{Z}_{2}$ and the resolved conifold. Nonabelianization for exponential networks is applied to compute directly unframed BPS indices counting states with D2 and D0 brane charges. Known results on these BPS spectra are correctly reproduced by computing new types of BPS invariants of 3d-5d BPS states, encoded b...

We explore BPS quivers for D=5 theories, compactified on a circle and geometrically engineered over local Calabi-Yau 3-folds, for which many of known machineries leading to (refined) indices fail due to the fine-tuning of the superpotential. For Abelian quivers, the counting reduces to a geometric one, but the technically challenging $L^2$ cohomology proved to be essential for sensible BPS spectra. We offer a mathematical theorem to remedy the difficulty, but for non-Abelian ...

We construct a statistical model that reproduces the BPS partition function of D4-D2-D0 bound states on a class of toric Calabi-Yau three-folds. The Calabi-Yau three-folds we consider are obtained by adding a compact two-cycle to $A_{N-1}$-ALE $\times \mathbb{C}$. We show that in the small radii limit of the Calabi-Yau the D4-D2-D0 partition function is correctly reproduced by counting the number of triangles and parallelograms.

The quiver Yangian, an infinite-dimensional algebra introduced recently in arXiv:2003.08909, is the algebra underlying BPS state counting problems for toric Calabi-Yau three-folds. We introduce trigonometric and elliptic analogues of quiver Yangians, which we call toroidal quiver algebras and elliptic quiver algebras, respectively. We construct the representations of the shifted toroidal and elliptic algebras in terms of the statistical model of crystal melting. We also deriv...

We study the refined and unrefined crystal/BPS partition functions of D6-D2-D0 brane bound states for all toric Calabi-Yau threefolds without compact 4-cycles and some non-toric examples. They can be written as products of (generalized) MacMahon functions. We check our expressions and use them as vacuum characters to study the gluings. We then consider the wall crossings and discuss possible crystal descriptions for different chambers. We also express the partition functions ...