2003/09/22 by Andreĭ Okounkov, Okounkov, Andrei, Cumrun Vafa +2 · 13 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Combinatorial Mathematics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Algebraic structures and combinatorial models
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/0309208
We propose a new duality involving topological strings in the limit of large string coupling constant. The dual is described in terms of a classical statistical mechanical model of crystal melting, where the temperature is inverse of the string coupling constant. The crystal is a discretization of the toric base of the Calabi-Yau with lattice length gs. As a strong evidence for this duality we recover the topological vertex in terms of the statistical mechanical probability distribution for crystal melting. We also propose a more general duality involving the dimer problem on periodic lattices and topological A-model string on arbitrary local toric threefolds. The (p,q) 5-brane web, dual to Calabi-Yau, gets identified with the transition regions of rigid dimer configurations.