Anomaly cancellation in the topological string

Kevin Costello; Si Li

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arXiv · 1905.09269

Anomaly cancellation in the topological string

Kevin Costello·Si Li

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Abstract

We describe the coupling of holomorphic Chern-Simons theory at large N with Kodaira-Spencer gravity. We explain a new anomaly cancellation mechanism at all loops in perturbation theory for open-closed topological B-model. At one loop this anomaly cancellation is analogous to the Green-Schwarz mechanism. As an application, we introduce a type I version of Kodaira-Spencer theory in complex dimensions 3 and 5. In complex dimension 5, we show that it can only be coupled consistently at the quantum level to holomorphic Chern-Simons theory with gauge group SO(32). This is analogous to the Green-Schwarz mechanism for the physical type I string. This coupled system is conjectured to be a supersymmetric localization of type I string theory. In complex dimension 3, the required gauge group is SO(8).

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BibTeX RIS

Kevin Costello, Si Li. 2020-01-05. Anomaly cancellation in the topological string. https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09269

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