Motivated by potential phenomenological applications, we develop the necessary tools for building GUT models in F-theory. This approach is quite flexible because the local geometrical properties of singularities in F-theory compactifications encode the physical content of the theory. In particular, we show how geometry determines the gauge group, matter content and Yukawa couplings of a given model. It turns out that these features are beautifully captured by a four-dimensional topologically twisted N = 4 theory which has been coupled to a surface defect theory on which chiral matter can propagate. From the vantagepoint of the four-dimensional topological theory, these defects are surface operators. Specific intersection points of these defects lead to Yukawa couplings. We also find that the unfolding of the singularity in the F-theory geometry precisely matches to properties of the topological theory with a defect.where E 3 = SU(3) × SU(2) denotes the non-abelian gauge group of the Standard Model, E 4 = SU(5) and E 5 = SO(10). Some early field theory realizations of this paradigm may be found in [6,7,8].

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We reconsider Chern-Simons gauge theory on a Seifert manifold M (the total space of a nontrivial circle bundle over a Riemann surface Σ). When M is a Seifert manifold, Lawrence and Rozansky have shown from the exact solution of Chern-Simons theory that the partition function has a remarkably simple structure and can be rewritten entirely as a sum of local contributions from the flat connections on M . We explain how this empirical fact follows from the technique of non-abelian localization as applied to the Chern-Simons path integral. In the process, we show that the partition function of Chern-Simons theory on M admits a topological interpretation in terms of the equivariant cohomology of the moduli space of flat connections on M .

We reconsider the question of which Calabi-Yau compactifications of the heterotic string are stable under world-sheet instanton corrections to the effective space-time superpotential. For instance, compactifications described by (0, 2) linear sigma models are believed to be stable, suggesting a remarkable cancellation among the instanton effects in these theories. Here, we show that this cancellation follows directly from a residue theorem, whose proof relies only upon the right-moving world-sheet supersymmetries and suitable compactness properties of the (0, 2) linear sigma model. Our residue theorem also extends to a new class of "half-linear" sigma models. Using these half-linear models, we show that heterotic compactifications on the quintic hypersurface in CP 4 for which the gauge bundle pulls back from a bundle on CP 4 are stable. Finally, we apply similar ideas to compute the superpotential contributions from families of membrane instantons in M-theory compactifications on manifolds of G 2 holonomy.

We study four N = 1 SU (N ) 6 gauge theories, with bi-fundamental chiral matter and a superpotential. In the infrared, these gauge theories all realize the low-energy worldvolume description of N coincident D3-branes transverse to the complex cone over a del Pezzo surface dP 3 which is the blowup of P 2 at three generic points. Therefore, the four gauge theories are expected to fall into the same universality class-an example of a phenomenon that has been termed "toric duality." However, little independent evidence has been given that such theories are infrared-equivalent.In fact, we show that the four gauge theories are related by the N = 1 duality of Seiberg, vindicating this expectation. We also study holographic aspects of these gauge theories. In particular we relate the spectrum of chiral operators in the gauge theories to wrapped D3-brane states in the AdS dual description. We finally demonstrate that the other known examples of toric duality are related by N = 1 duality, a fact which we conjecture holds generally.