Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 2010. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / In title on title page, double underscored "N" appears as upper case script. Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-121). / Given an oriented Riemannian four-manifold equipped with a principal bundle, we investigate the moduli spaceMVW of solutions to the Vafa-Witten equations. These equations arise from a twist of N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Physicists believe that this theory has a well-defined partition function, which depends on a single complex parameter. On one hand, the S-duality conjecture predicts that this partition function is a modular form. On the other hand, the Fourier coefficients of the partition function are supposed to be the "Euler characteristics" of various moduli spacesMASD of compactified anti-self-dual instantons. For several algebraic surfaces, these Euler characteristics were verified to be modular forms. Except in certain special cases, it's unclear how to precisely define the partition function. If there is a mathematically sensible definition of the partition function, we expect it to arise as a gauge-theoretic invariant of the moduli spaces MVW. The aim of this thesis is to initiate the analysis necessary to define such invariants. We establish various properties, computations, and estimates for the Vafa-Witten equations. In particular, we give a partial Uhlenbeck compactification of the moduli space. / by Bernard A.Mares, Jr. / Ph.D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/64488 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Mares, Bernard A., Jr. (Bernard Allen) |
| Contributors | Tomasz S.Mrowka., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mathematics., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mathematics. |
| Publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | M.I.T. Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 121 p., application/pdf |
| Rights | M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 |
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