Geometric structures on G2 and Spin(7)-manifolds

We discuss selected topics on the topology of moduli spaces of curves and maps, emphasizing their relation with Gromov--Witten theory and integrable systems.

It is well-known that 7-dimensional 3-Sasakian manifolds carry a one-parametric family of compatible G_2 structures and that they do not admit a characteristic connection. In this note, we show that there is nevertheless a distinguished cocalibrated G_2 structure in this family whose characteristic connection along with its parallel spinor field can be used for a thorough investigation of the geometric properties of 7-dimensional 3-Sasakian manifolds. Many known and some new ...

This is a survey article on the recent progress in understanding the Strominger-Yau-Zaslow (SYZ) mirror symmetry conjecture, especially on the effect of quantum corrections, via Witten-Morse theory using the program first depicted by Fukaya to obtain an explicit relation between differential geometric operations, e.g. wedge product of differential forms and Lie-bracket of the Kodaira-Spencer complexes, with combinatorial structures, e.g. Morse $A_\infty$ structures and scatte...

This paper gives a uniform, self-contained and direct approach to a variety of obstruction-theoretic problems on manifolds of dimension 7 and 6. We give necessary and sufficient cohomological criteria for the existence of various G-structures on vector bundles over such manifolds especially using low dimensional representations of the group U(2).

We describe off-shell $\mathcal{N}=1$ M-theory compactifications down to four dimensions in terms of eight-dimensional manifolds equipped with a topological $Spin(7)$-structure. Motivated by the exceptionally generalized geometry formulation of M-theory compactifications, we consider an eight-dimensional manifold $\mathcal{M}_{8}$ equipped with a particular set of tensors $\mathfrak{S}$ that allow to naturally embed in $\mathcal{M}_{8}$ a family of $G_{2}$-structure seven-dim...

We consider $G_2$ structures with torsion coupled with $G_2$-instantons, on a compact $7$-dimensional manifold. The coupling is via an equation for $4$-forms which appears in supergravity and generalized geometry, known as the Bianchi identity. The resulting system of partial differential equations can be regarded as an analogue of the Strominger system in $7$-dimensions. We initiate the study of the moduli space of solutions and show that it is finite dimensional using ellip...

We collect together various facts about G_2 and Spin(7) geometry which are likely well known but which do not seem to have appeared explicitly in the literature before. These notes should be useful to graduate students and new researchers in G_2 and Spin(7) geometry.

This article surveys invariants of four-manifolds and their relation to Donaldson-Witten theory, and other topologically twisted Yang-Mills theories. The article is written for the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics, and focuses on the period since the first edition in 2006.

In this paper most of the classes of G2-structures with Einstein induced metric of negative, null or positive scalar curvature are realized. This is carried out by means of warped G2-structures with fiber an Einstein SU(3) manifold. The torsion forms of any warped G2-structure are explicitly described in terms of the torsion forms of the SU(3)-structure and the warping function, which allows to give characterizations of the principal classes of Einstein warped G2 manifolds. S...

We can define the ``volume'' $V$ for Hermitian connections on a Hermitian complex line bundle over a Riemannian manifold $X$, which can be considered to be the ``mirror'' of the standard volume for submanifolds. This is called the Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action in physics. In this paper, (1) we introduce the negative gradient flow of $V$, which we call the line bundle mean curvature flow. Then, we show the short-time existence and uniqueness of this flow. When $X$ is K\"ahl...