December 8, 2006

Chiu-Chu Melissa Liu (Columbia)

Title: Gromov-Witten Invariants of Toric Calabi-Yau Threefolds

Abstract: Based on the duality between Gromov-Witten theory on Calabi-Yau threefolds and Chern-Simons theory on three manifolds, M. Aganagic, A. Klemm, M. Marino, and C. Vafa proposed "the topological vertex", an algorithm on effectly computing Gromov-Witten invariants in all genera of any toric Calabi-Yau threefold. I will describe a mathematical theory of the topological vertex based on relative Gromov-Witten theory. This is a joint work with Jun Li, Kefeng Liu, and Jian Zhou.