Mirror Symmetry

This thorough and detailed exposition is the result of an intensive month-long course on mirror symmetry sponsored by the Clay Mathematics Institute. It develops mirror symmetry from both mathematical and physical perspectives with the aim of furthering interaction between the two fields. The material will be particularly useful for mathematicians and physicists who wish to advance their understanding across both disciplines. Mirror symmetry is a phenomenon arising in string theory in which two very different manifolds give rise to equivalent physics. Such a correspondence has significant mathematical consequences, the most familiar of which involves the enumeration of holomorphic curves inside complex manifolds by solving differential equations obtained from a ``mirror'' geometry. The inclusion of D-brane states in the equivalence has led to further conjectures involving calibrated submanifolds of the mirror pairs and new (conjectural) invariants of complex manifolds: the Gopakumar-Vafa invariants. This book gives a single, cohesive treatment of mirror symmetry. Parts 1 and 2 develop the necessary mathematical and physical background from ``scratch''. The treatment is focused, developing only the material most necessary for the task. In Parts 3 and 4 the physical and mathematical proofs of mirror symmetry are given. From the physics side, this means demonstrating that two different physical theories give isomorphic physics. Each physical theory can be described geometrically, and thus mirror symmetry gives rise to a ``pairing'' of geometries. The proof involves applying $R\leftrightarrow 1/R$ circle duality to the phases of the fields in the gauged linear sigma model. The mathematics proof develops Gromov-Witten theory in the algebraic setting, beginning with the moduli spaces of curves and maps, and uses localization techniques to show that certain hypergeometric functions encode the Gromov-Witten invariants in genus zero, as is predicted by mirror symmetry. Part 5 is devoted to advanced topi This one-of-a-kind book is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in mathematics and mathematical and theoretical physics.

Vol. 1 represents a new ed. of papers which were originally published in Essays on mirror manifolds (1992); supplemented by the additional volume: Mirror symmetry 2 which presents papers by both physicists and mathematicians. Mirror symmetry 1 (the 1st volume) constitutes the proceedings of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Workshop of 1991.

Mathematicians wanting to get into the field ... will find a very well written and encyclopaedic account of the mathematics which was needed in, and was developed from, what now might be termed classical mirror symmetry. --Bulletin of the LMS The book is highly recommended for everyone who wants to learn about the fascinating recent interplay between physics and mathematics. --Mathematical Reviews Mirror symmetry began when theoretical physicists made some astonishing predictions about rational curves on quintic hypersurfaces in four-dimensional projective space. Understanding the mathematics behind these predictions has been a substantial challenge. This book is a completely comprehensive monograph on mirror symmetry, covering the original observations by the physicists through the most recent progress made to date. Subjects discussed include toric varieties, Hodge theory, Kahler geometry, moduli of stable maps, Calabi-Yau manifolds, quantum cohomology, Gromov-Witten invariants, and the mirror theorem.

This is the English translation of Professor Voisin's book reflecting the discovery of the mirror symmetry phenomenon. The first chapter is devoted to the geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds, and the second describes, as motivation, the ideas from quantum field theory that led to the discovery of mirror symmetry. The other chapters deal with more specialized aspects of the subject: the work of Candelas, de la Ossa, Greene, and Parkes, based on the fact that under the mirror symmetry hypothesis, the variation of Hodge structure of a Calabi-Yau threefold determines the Gromov-Witten invariants of its mirror; Batyrev's construction, which exhibits the mirror symmetry phenomenon between hypersurfaces of toric Fano varieties, after a combinatorial classification of the latter; the mathematical construction of the Gromov-Witten potential, and the proof of its crucial property (that it satisfies the WDVV equation), which makes it possible to construct a flat connection underlying a variation of Hodge structure in the Calabi-Yau case. The book concludes with the first "naive" Givental computation, which is a mysterious mathematical justification of the computation of Candelas, et al.

Introduction to homological mirror symmetry from the point of view of representation theory, suitable for graduate students.

Research in string theory has generated a rich interaction with algebraic geometry, with exciting work that includes the Strominger-Yau-Zaslow conjecture. This monograph builds on lectures at the 2002 Clay School on Geometry and String Theory that sought to bridge the gap between the languages of string theory and algebraic geometry.

An ideal reference on the mathematical aspects of quantum field theory, this volume provides a set of lectures and reviews that both introduce and representatively review the state-of-the art in the field from different perspectives.

This book furnishes a brief introduction to classical mirror symmetry, a term that denotes the process of computing Gromov–Witten invariants of a Calabi–Yau threefold by using the Picard–Fuchs differential equation of period integrals of its mirror Calabi–Yau threefold. The book concentrates on the best-known example, the quintic hypersurface in 4-dimensional projective space, and its mirror manifold.First, there is a brief review of the process of discovery of mirror symmetry and the striking result proposed in the celebrated paper by Candelas and his collaborators. Next, some elementary results of complex manifolds and Chern classes needed for study of mirror symmetry are explained. Then the topological sigma models, the A-model and the B-model, are introduced. The classical mirror symmetry hypothesis is explained as the equivalence between the correlation function of the A-model of a quintic hyper-surface and that of the B-model of its mirror manifold.On the B-model side, the process of construction of a pair of mirror Calabi–Yau threefold using toric geometry is briefly explained. Also given are detailed explanations of the derivation of the Picard–Fuchs differential equation of the period integrals and on the process of deriving the instanton expansion of the A-model Yukawa coupling based on the mirror symmetry hypothesis.On the A-model side, the moduli space of degree d quasimaps from CP^1 with two marked points to CP^4 is introduced, with reconstruction of the period integrals used in the B-model side as generating functions of the intersection numbers of the moduli space. Lastly, a mathematical justification for the process of the B-model computation from the point of view of the geometry of the moduli space of quasimaps is given.The style of description is between that of mathematics and physics, with the assumption that readers have standard graduate student backgrounds in both disciplines.