No abstract

We develop a new approach to the study of supersymmetric gauge theories on ALE spaces using the theory of framed sheaves on root toric stacks, which illuminates relations with gauge theories on R 4 and with two-dimensional conformal field theory. We construct a stacky compactification of the minimal resolution X k of the A k−1 toric singularity C 2 /Z k , which is a projective toric orbifold X k such that X k \ X k is a Z k -gerbe. We construct moduli spaces of torsion free sheaves on X k which are framed along the compactification gerbe. We prove that this moduli space is a smooth quasi-projective variety, compute its dimension, and classify its fixed points under the natural induced toric action. We use this construction to compute the partition functions and correlators of chiral BPS operators for N = 2 quiver gauge theories on X k with nontrivial holonomies at infinity. The partition functions are computed with and without couplings to bifundamental matter hypermultiplets and expressed in terms of toric blowup formulas, which relate them to the corresponding Nekrasov partition functions on the affine toric subsets of X k . We compare our new partition functions with previous computations, explore their connections to the representation theory of affine Lie algebras, and find new constraints on fractional instanton charges in the coupling to fundamental matter. We show that the partition functions in the low energy limit are characterised by the Seiberg-Witten curves, and in some cases also by suitable blowup equations involving Riemann theta-functions on the Seiberg-Witten curve with characteristics related to the nontrivial holonomies.

Given a normal projective irreducible stack X over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero we consider framed sheaves on X , i.e., pairs (E, φ E ), where E is a coherent sheaf on X and φ E is a morphism from E to a fixed coherent sheaf F. After introducing a suitable notion of (semi)stability, we construct a projective scheme, which is a moduli space for semistable framed sheaves with fixed Hilbert polynomial, and an open subset of it, which is a fine moduli space for stable framed sheaves. If X is a projective irreducible orbifold of dimension two and F a locally free sheaf on a smooth divisor D ⊂ X satisfying certain conditions, we consider (D, F)-framed sheaves, i.e., framed sheaves (E, φ E ) with E a torsion-free sheaf which is locally free in a neighborhood of D, and φ E |D an isomorphism. These pairs are µ-stable for a suitable choice of a parameter entering the (semi)stability condition, and of the polarization of X . This implies the existence of a fine moduli space parameterizing isomorphism classes of (D, F)-framed sheaves on X with fixed Hilbert polynomial, which is a quasi-projective scheme. In an appendix we develop the example of stacky Hirzebruch surfaces. This is the first paper of a project aimed to provide an algebro-geometric approach to the study of gauge theories on a wide class of 4-dimensional Riemannian manifolds by means of framed sheaves on "stacky" compactifications of them. In particular, in a subsequent paper [20] these results are used to study gauge theories on ALE spaces of type A k .