Daily Papers

At leading order in the genus expansion the ETH matrix model for DSSYK reproduces its correlators by construction, while its higher-genus corrections are conjectured to capture higher-topology contributions in the dual sine-dilaton gravity -- a correspondence established so far only for the disk and the wormhole. At fixed genus the correlators are built from discrete volumes N_{g,n}, polynomial in q-deformed zeta values ζ_q(2k) with q=e^{-λ}, λ being the DSSYK coupling. These lie in the ring of quasimodular forms generated by the Eisenstein series E_2,E_4,E_6, whose S-duality yields an exact closed form for the leading non-perturbative correction as λto0, controlled by widetilde q=e^{-4π^2/λ}. Known at disk level, this scale is shown here to govern the fixed-genus, higher-boundary amplitudes as well. We show that the term linear in widetilde q, at leading order in λ, is captured entirely by the q-deformed Weil--Petersson volumes, and reduces to a finite sum of intersection numbers of κ-classes on the moduli space mathcal M_{g,n} of stable curves, computable without repeating the topological recursion that produced the N_{g,n}. We tabulate it for every (g,n) whose q-deformed volume is known in closed form, and extend it to (3,1),(3,2),(4,1), where none is available. The construction is not restricted to leading order: we work out O(widetilde q^2) for the same cases.

We present a non-perturbative formulation of quantum gravity in asymptotically flat spacetimes using Witten's cubic open string field theory (OSFT) on unstable D-branes. Given that the massless spin-2 sector of the closed string spectrum inherently encodes the degrees of freedom of quantum gravity, we establish this connection by mapping on-shell closed string excitations directly to gauge-invariant operators in OSFT, realizing a concrete flat-space analogue of the AdS/CFT correspondence. By evaluating the OSFT correlation functions of these operators perturbatively around the tachyon vacuum, we systematically reproduce the all-orders genus expansion of the closed string S-matrix for the associated states. This demonstrates that closed string theory-and thus quantum gravity-emerges dynamically from the open string tachyon vacuum, establishing Witten's OSFT as a fully calculable, non-perturbative framework for flat-space quantum gravity.

We compute the elliptic genera of two-dimensional N=(2,2) and N=(0,2) gauged linear sigma models via supersymmetric localization, for rank-one gauge groups. The elliptic genus is expressed as a sum over residues of a meromorphic function whose argument is the holonomy of the gauge field along both the spatial and the temporal directions of the torus. We illustrate our formulas by a few examples including the quintic Calabi-Yau, N=(2,2) SU(2) and O(2) gauge theories coupled to N fundamental chiral multiplets, and a geometric N=(0,2) model.

We study the problem of determining the minimal genus of a simple finite connected graph. We present an algorithm which, for an arbitrary graph G with n vertices and m edges, determines the orientable genus of G in O(n(4^m/n)^{n/t}) steps where t is the girth of G. This algorithm avoids difficulties that many other genus algorithms have with handling bridge placements which is a well-known issue. The algorithm has a number of useful properties for practical use: it is simple to implement, it outputs the faces of an optimal embedding, and it iteratively narrows both upper and lower bounds. We illustrate the algorithm by determining the genus of the (3,12) cage (which is 17); other graphs are also considered.

In quantum mechanics of genus-1 potentials, perturbation theory around the topologically trivial saddle and non-perturbative instanton saddle are constructively related via the P/NP relation. Whether such a relation persists for higher-genus potentials has remained an open problem. In this work, we resolve it using tools from complex algebraic geometry combined with exact WKB. The classical energy conservation relation p^2 = 2(E-V(q)) defines a genus-g Riemann surface X, whose periods are naturally organized by its Jacobian variety J(X) = C^{g}/Λ via the Abel-Jacobi map, and independently by the solution basis of the associated Picard-Fuchs equations. We show that the physically relevant, WKB-active cycles are generally related to the Picard-Fuchs basis by a linear transformation that lies in SL(2g,Z) but not in the symplectic group Sp(2g,Z) once ggeq2, in contrast to the genus-1 case, where the two groups coincide. This mismatch is the obstruction that has made an explicit higher-genus P/NP relation elusive. We show that it can be resolved by passing to a modified Riemann bilinear identity, built from a suitably transformed intersection matrix, which the WKB-active periods do satisfy exactly. The result is an all-orders quantum P/NP relation valid for potentials of arbitrary genus, which we derive explicitly for genus-2 (quintic and sextic) and genus-3 (septic and octic) anharmonic oscillators.

Gross, Mansour, and Tucker introduced the partial-duality polynomial of a ribbon graph [Distributions, European J. Combin. 86, 1--20, 2020], the generating function enumerating partial duals by the Euler genus. Chmutov and Vignes-Tourneret wondered if this polynomial and its conjectured properties would hold for general delta-matroids, which are combinatorial abstractions of ribbon graphs. Yan and Jin contributed to this inquiry by identifying a subset of delta-matroids-specifically, even normal binary ones-whose twist polynomials are characterized by a singular term. Building upon this foundation, the current paper expands the scope of the investigation to encompass even non-binary delta-matroids, revealing that none of them have width-changing twists.