Seiberg-Witten Curves and Integrable Systems

This thesis presents several new insights on the interface between mathematics and theoretical physics, with a central role for fermions on Riemann surfaces. First of all, the duality between Vafa-Witten theory and WZW models is embedded into string theory. Secondly, this model is generalized to a web of dualities connecting topological string theory and N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories to a configuration of D-branes that intersect over a Riemann surface. This description yi...

Methods are reviewed for computing the instanton expansion of the prepotential for N=2 Seiberg-Witten theory with non-hyperelliptic curves. These results, when compared with the instanton expansion obtained from the microscopic Lagrangian, provide detailed tests of M-theory. Group theoretic regularities of F_ 1-inst allow one to "reverse engineer" a Seiberg-Witten curve for SU(N) with two antisymmetric representations and N_f \leq 3 fundamental hypermultiplet representations,...

We take supersymmetry in the Seiberg-Witten theory as a case study of the uses of (super)symmetry arguments in studying the ontology of four-dimensional interacting quantum field theories. Together with a double expansion, supersymmetry is a via media that helps to bridge the gap between the ontologies of an exact quantum field theory and its semi-classical limit. We discuss a class of states that exist at any value of the coupling, and whose properties such as mass, electric...

We construct natural Riemannian metrics on Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces and study their geometry.

Gorsky et al. presented an explicit construction of Whitham deformations of the Seiberg-Witten curve for the $SU(N+1)$ $\calN = 2$ SUSY Yang-Mills theory. We extend their result to all classical gauge groups and some other cases such as the spectral curve of the $A^{(2)}_{2N}$ affine Toda Toda system. Our construction, too, uses fractional powers of the superpotential $W(x)$ that characterizes the curve. We also consider the $u$-plane integral of topologically twisted theorie...

N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories for all classical gauge groups, that is, for SU(N), SO(N), and Sp(N) is considered. The equations which define the Seiberg-Witten curve are proposed. In some cases they are solved. It is shown that for (almost) all models allowed by the asymptotic freedom the 1-instanton corrections which follows from these equations agree with the direct computations and with known results.

After the work of Seiberg and Witten, it has been seen that the dynamics of N=2 Yang-Mills theory is governed by a Riemann surface $\Sigma$. In particular, the integral of a special differential $\lambda_{SW}$ over (a subset of) the periods of $\Sigma$ gives the mass formula for BPS-saturated states. We show that, for each simple group $G$, the Riemann surface is a spectral curve of the periodic Toda lattice for the dual group, $G^\vee$, whose affine Dynkin diagram is the dua...

The non-perturbative behavior of the N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories is both highly non-trivial and tractable. In the last three years the valuable progress was achieved in the instanton counting, the direct evaluation of the low-energy effective Wilsonian action of the theory. The localization technique together with the Lorentz deformation of the action provides an elegant way to reduce functional integrals, representing the effective action, to some finite dimension...

Let M denote a compact, orientable, 3-dimensional manifold and let a denote a contact 1-form on M; thus the wedge product of a with da is nowhere zero. This article explains how the Seiberg-Witten Floer homology groups as defined for any given Spin-C structure on M give closed, integral curves of the vector field that generates the kernel of da.

We construct Seiberg-Witten curves for 5d $\mathcal{N}=1$ gauge theories whose Type IIB 5-brane configuration involves an O7-plane and discuss an intriguing relation between theories with an O7$^+$-plane and those with an O7$^-$-plane and 8 D7-branes. We claim that 5-brane configurations with an O7$^+$-plane can be effectively understood as 5-brane configurations with a set of an O7$^-$-plane and eight D7-branes with some special tuning of their masses such that the D7-branes...