- Homological mirror symmetry
Homological mirror symmetry is a mathematical
conjecture made byMaxim Kontsevich . It seeks a systematic mathematical explanation for a phenomenon calledmirror symmetry first observed by physicists studyingstring theory .In an address to the 1994
International Congress of Mathematicians inZurich , Kontsevich speculated that mirror symmetry for a pair ofCalabi-Yau manifold s "X" and "Y" could be explained as an equivalence of atriangulated category constructed from thealgebraic geometry of "X" and another triangulated category constructed from thesymplectic geometry of "Y".Edward Witten originally described the topological twisting of the N=(2,2) supersymmetric field theory into what he called the A and B models. These models concern maps from Riemann surfaces into a fixed target - usually a Calabi-Yau manifold. Most of the mathematical predictions of mirror symmetry are embedded in the physical equivalence of the A-model on "Y" with the B-model on its mirror "X". When the Riemann surfaces have empty boundary, they represent the worldsheets of closed strings. To cover the case of open strings, one must introduce boundary conditions to preserve the supersymmetry. In the A-model, these boundary conditions come in the form ofLagrangian submanifold s of "Y" with some additional structure (often called a brane structure). In the B-model, the boundary conditions come in the form of holomorphic (or algebraic) submanifolds of "X" with holomorphic (or algebraic) vector bundles on them. These are the objects one uses to build the relevant categories. They are often called A and B branes respectively. Morphisms in the categories are given by the massless spectrum of open strings stretching between two branes.The closed string A and B models only capture the so-called topological sector - a small portion of the full string theory. Similarly, the branes in these models are only topological approximations to the full dynamical objects that are
D-brane s. Even so, the mathematics resulting from this small piece of string theory has been both deep and difficult.Only in a few examples have mathematicians been able to verify the conjecture. In his seminal address, Kontsevich commented that the conjecture could be proved in the case of
elliptic curve s usingtheta function s. Following this route,Alexander Polishchuk andEric Zaslow provided a proof of a version of the conjecture for elliptic curves.Kenji Fukaya was able to establish elements of the conjecture forabelian varieties . Later, Kontsevich and Yan Soibelman provided a proof of the majority of the conjecture for nonsingulartorus bundle s overaffine manifold s using ideas from theSYZ conjecture . Recently,Paul Seidel proved the conjecture in the case of thequartic surface .ee also
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Topological quantum field theory *
Category theory *
Floer homology *
Fukaya category *
Derived category References
* Kontsevich, Maxim. "Homological algebra of mirror symmetry." [http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/alg-geom/9411018]
* Seidel, Paul. "Homological mirror symmetry for the quartic surface." [http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/math.SG/0310414]
* Kontsevich, Maxim, Soibelman Yan. "Homological Mirror Symmetry and torus fibrations." [http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/math.SG/0011041]
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