A point's point of view of stringy geometry

The notion of a "point" is essential to describe the topology of spacetime. Despite this, a point probably does not play a particularly distinguished rôle in any intrinsic formulation of string theory. We discuss one way to try to determine the notion of a point from a worldsheet point of view. The derived category description of D-branes is the key tool. The case of a flop is analyzed and II-stability in this context is tied in to some ideas of Bridgeland. Monodromy associated to the flop is also computed via II-stability and shown to be consistent with previous conjectures. © SISSA/ISAS 2003.

Duke Scholars

Author Paul Stephen Aspinwall Mathematics