In recent years, the old idea that gauge theories and string theories are equivalent has been implemented and developed in various ways, and there are by now various models where the string theory / gauge theory correspondence is at work. One of the most important examples of this correspondence relates Chern-Simons theory, a topological gauge theory in three dimensions which describes knot and three-manifold invariants, to topological string theory, which is deeply related to Gromov-Witten invariants. This has led to some surprising relations between three-manifold geometry and enumerative geometry. This book gives the first coherent presentation of this and other related topics. After an introduction to matrix models and Chern-Simons theory, the book describes in detail the topological string theories that correspond to these gauge theories and develops the mathematical implications of this duality for the enumerative geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds and knot theory. It is written in a pedagogical style and will be useful reading for graduate students and researchers in both mathematics and physics willing to learn about these developments.

After an introduction to matrix models and Cherns-Simons gauge theory, this book describes in detail the topological string theories that correspond to these gauge theories and develops the mathematical implication of this duality for the enumerative geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds and knot theory.

This book provides an introduction to some of the most recent developments in string theory, and in particular to their mathematical implications and their impact in knot theory and algebraic geometry.

This volume contains the proceedings of the conference String-Math 2015, which was held from December 31, 2015–January 4, 2016, at Tsinghua Sanya International Mathematics Forum in Sanya, China. Two of the main themes of this volume are frontier research on Calabi-Yau manifolds and mirror symmetry and the development of non-perturbative methods in supersymmetric gauge theories. The articles present state-of-the-art developments in these topics. String theory is a broad subject, which has profound connections with broad branches of modern mathematics. In the last decades, the prosperous interaction built upon the joint efforts from both mathematicians and physicists has given rise to marvelous deep results in supersymmetric gauge theory, topological string, M-theory and duality on the physics side, as well as in algebraic geometry, differential geometry, algebraic topology, representation theory and number theory on the mathematics side.

An advanced quantum mechanics textbook that provides a unique pedagogical introduction to high-level topics in the field.