Calabi-Yau

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Calabi-Yau manifolds are a certain class of smooth complex manifolds that have proved to play an important role in several areas of mathematics and physics. Calabi-Yau manifolds have proved to occupy a central place in string theory and are the subject of the important mirror symmetry conjecture. Research here has in turn led to surprising results in the study of algebraic geometry and related fields.

To be Calabi-Yau, a manifold must first have the structure of Kähler manifold—this means that it is a manifold with some notion of distance provided by a Riemannian manifold (called the Kähler metric), satisfying certain additional conditions. Then a Kähler manifold $M$ is said to be Calabi-Yau if it carries a non-vanishing holomorphic differential form of maximal dimension (in more sophisticated language, one says that "the canonical bundle is trivial", and this is turn is equivalent to the vanishing of the first Chern class). In the case that the manifold in question is compact, this has many several equivalent statements, which may be interpreted directly as conditions imposed on the Kähler metric: $M$ is Calabi-Yau if and only if the Kähler metric has zero Ricci curvature.

Examples

All elliptic curves are Calabi-Yau, since when regarded as quotients of the complex plane Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \mathbb C} by a lattice, they carry a non-vanishing holomorphic 1-form Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle dz} .

A degree Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle n+1} hypersurface Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle M} in Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \mathbb{P}^n} is Calabi-Yau. This is a simple object, nothing more than the vanishing set of a polynomial of degree Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle n+1} in Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle n} dimensional space. The proof is easy, but requires the development of some machinery: one computes the first Chern class Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle c_1(TM)} by using the normal bundle exact sequence and the adjunction formula, which gives:

Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle 0\to TM \to T\mathbb{P}^n \to \mathcal{O}(n+1)|_M \to 0 }

by additivity of the total Chern class this yields Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle c(T\mathbb{P}^n) = c(TM)(1+(n+1)\omega)} , where Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \omega} is the hyperplane class, a generator of the cohomology ring Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle H^*(\mathbb P^n;\mathbb C)} . But this implies that

Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle c(TM) = 1+c_1(TM)+\ldots = \frac{(1+\omega)^{n+1}}{1+(n+1)\omega} }

from which one easily concludes that Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle c_1(TM) = c_1(K_M) = 0} .

There are many other ways to construct Calabi-Yau manifolds. In any example similar to that above, one may start with a hypersurface that is not smooth (it might intersect itself, or have something like a corner: these are called singularities). By smoothing out these manifolds (more technically, taking a resolution of singularities), one then obtains a smooth Calabi-Yau. A vast array of other examples, useful for computations, arisse as so-called toric varieties.

Calabi Conjecture

The first Chern class of a Kähler manifold is homologous to the Ricci curvature. For this reason, Calabi conjectured that when Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle c_1(TM) = 0} , there exists a metric on the manifold whose Ricci form vanishes identically. This was the Calabi Conjecture, eventually proven by Shing-Tung Yau.