Narrow Results

We study a topological version of the T-duality relation between pairs consisting of a principal U(1)-bundle equipped with a degree-three integral cohomology class. We describe the homotopy type of a classifying space for such pairs and show that it admits a selfmap which implements a T-duality transformation. We give a simple derivation of a T-duality isomorphism for certain twisted cohomology theories. We conclude with some explicit computations of twisted K-theory groups and discuss an example of iterated T-duality for higher-dimensional torus bundles.

We give a simplified definition of topological T-duality that applies to arbitrary torus bundles. The new definition does not involve Chern classes or spectral sequences, only gerbes and morphisms between them. All the familiar topological conditions for T-duals are shown to follow. We determine necessary and sufficient conditions for existence of a T-dual in the case of affine torus bundles. This is general enough to include all principal torus bundles as well as torus bundles with arbitrary monodromy representations. We show that isomorphisms in twisted cohomology, twisted K-theory and of Courant algebroids persist in this general setting. We also give an example where twisted K-theory groups can be computed by iterating T-duality.

We consider topological T-duality of torus bundles equipped with -gerbes. We show how a geometry on the gerbe determines a reduction of its band to the subsheaf of S¹-valued functions which are constant along the torus fibers. We observe that such a reduction is exactly the additional datum needed for the construction of a T-dual pair. We illustrate the theory by working out the example of the canonical lifting gerbe on a compact Lie group which is a torus bundle over the associated flag manifold. It was a recent observation of Daenzer and van Erp [16] that for certain compact Lie groups and a particular choice of the gerbe, the T-dual torus bundle is given by the Langlands dual group.

We provide a pedagogical introduction to some aspects of integrability, dualities and deformations of physical systems in $0+1$ and in $1+1$ dimensions. In particular, we concentrate on the T-duality of point particles and strings as well as on the Ruijsenaars duality of finite many-body integrable models, we review the concept of the integrability and, in particular, of the Lax integrability and we analyze the basic examples of the Yang–Baxter deformations of nonlinear ${\sigma }$-models. The central mathematical structure which we describe in detail is the ${ℰ}$-model which is the dynamical system exhibiting all those three phenomena simultaneously. The last part of the paper contains original results, in particular, a formulation of sufficient conditions for strong integrability of non-degenerate ${ℰ}$-models.

We give a covariant realization of the doubled sigma-model formulation of duality-symmetric string theory within the general framework of para-Hermitian geometry. We define a notion of generalized metric on a para-Hermitian manifold and discuss its relation to Born geometry. We show that a Born geometry uniquely defines a worldsheet sigma-model with a para-Hermitian target space, and we describe its Lie algebroid gauging as a means of recovering the conventional sigma-model description of a physical string background as the leaf space of a foliated para-Hermitian manifold. Applying the Kotov–Strobl gauging leads to a generalized notion of T-duality when combined with transformations that act on Born geometries. We obtain a geometric interpretation of the self-duality constraint that halves the degrees of freedom in doubled sigma-models, and we give geometric characterizations of non-geometric string backgrounds in this setting. We illustrate our formalism with detailed worldsheet descriptions of closed string phase spaces, of doubled groups where our notion of generalized T-duality includes non-abelian T-duality, and of doubled nilmanifolds.

This paper is a step towards realizing T-duality and Hori formulae for loop spaces. Here, we prove T-duality and Hori formulae for winding $q$-loop spaces, which are infinite dimensional subspaces of loop spaces.

In this paper, we introduce a new ‘Thom class’ formulation of topological T-duality for principal torus bundles. This definition is equivalent to the established one of Bunke, Rumpf, and Schick but has the virtue of removing the global assumptions on the H-flux required in the old definition. With the new definition, we provide easier and more transparent proofs of the classification of T-duals and generalize the local formulation of T-duality for circle bundles by Bunke, Schick, and Spitzweck to the torus case.

We establish the twisted crystallographic T-duality, which is an isomorphism between Freed–Moore twisted equivariant K-groups of the position and momentum tori associated to an extension of a crystallographic group. The proof is given by identifying the map with the Dirac homomorphism in twisted Chabert–Echterhoff KK-theory. We also illustrate how to exploit it in K-theory computations.

We give a precise formulation of T-duality for Ramond–Ramond fields. This gives a canonical isomorphism between the "geometrically invariant" subgroups of the twisted differentialK-theory groups associated to certain principal torus bundles. Our result combines topological T-duality with the Buscher rules found in physics.

We introduce conformal Courant algebroids, a mild generalization of Courant algebroids in which only a conformal structure rather than a bilinear form is assumed. We introduce exact conformal Courant algebroids and show they are classified by pairs (L, H) with L a flat line bundle and H ∈ H³(M, L) a degree 3 class with coefficients in L. As a special case gerbes for the crossed module (U(1) → ℤ₂) can be used to twist TM ⊕ T*M into a conformal Courant algebroid. In the exact case there is a twisted cohomology which is 4-periodic if L² = 1. The structure of Conformal Courant algebroids on circle bundles leads us to construct a T-duality for orientifolds with free involution. This incarnation of T-duality yields an isomorphism of 4-periodic twisted cohomology. We conjecture that the isomorphism extends to an isomorphism in twisted KR-theory and give some calculations to support this claim.

Duality symmetries have played a key role in the discovery that the five consistent superstring theories in 10 dimensions emerge as different corners of the moduli space of a single unifying theory, known as M-theory. Focusing on the target space, or T, duality symmetry, we show how it can be formulated in spacetimes with abelian and non-abelian isometries. Finally, we discuss some recent work that realizes non-abelian T-duality as a consistent truncation to seven-dimensional supergravity, thus generalizing to the non-abelian case the realization of abelian T-duality at the supergravity level.

We show that the supermembrane theory compactified on a torus is invariant under T-duality. There are two different topological sectors of the compactified supermembrane (M2) classified according to a vanishing or nonvanishing second cohomology class. We find the explicit T-duality transformation that acts locally on the supermembrane theory and we show that it is an exact symmetry of the theory. We give a global interpretation of the T-duality in terms of bundles. It has a natural description in terms of the cohomology of the base manifold and the homology of the target torus. We show that in the limit when the torus degenerate into a circle and the M2 mass operator restricts to the string-like configurations, the usual closed string T-duality transformation between the type IIA and type IIB mass operators is recovered. Moreover, if we just restrict M2 mass operator to string-like configurations but we perform a generalized T-duality we find the SL(2,Z) nonperturbative multiplet of IIA.

We show that the ideas related to integrability and symmetry play an important role not only in the string T-duality story but also in its point particle counterpart. Applying those ideas, we find that the T-duality seems to be a more widespread phenomenon in the context of the point particle dynamics than it is in the string one; moreover, it concerns physically very relevant point particle dynamical systems and not just somewhat exotic ones fabricated for the purpose. As a source of T-duality examples, we consider maximally superintegrable spherically symmetric electro-gravitational backgrounds in $n$ dimensions. We then describe in detail four such spherically symmetric dynamical systems which are all mutually interconnected by a web of point particle T-dualities. In particular, the dynamics of a charged particle scattered by a repulsive Coulomb potential in a flat space is T-dual to the dynamics of the Coulomb scattering in the space of constant negative curvature, but it is also T-dual to the (conformal) Calogero–Moser inverse square dynamics both in flat and hyperbolic spaces. Thus knowing just the Hamiltonian dynamics of the scattered particle cannot give us information about the curvature of the space in which the particle moves.

It is now known (or in some cases just believed) that many quantum field theories exhibit dualities, equivalences with the same or a different theory in which things appear very different, but the overall physical implications are the same. We will discuss some of these dualities from the point of view of a mathematician, focusing on “charge conservation” and the role played by K-theory and noncommutative geometry. Some of the work described here is joint with Mathai Varghese and Stefan Mendez-Diez; the last section is new.