General relativity and topological string duality through Penrose–Ward transform

Abstract

This paper discusses the relation between topological M-theory, self-dual Yang–Mills and general relativity. We construct a topological membrane field action from Witten’s cubic string field theory, which reduces to topological Yang–Mills on a one-parameter family of conifolds. It turns out that this can be interpreted as the twistor space of the four-dimensional Lagrangian submanifold M for large momenta. From the viewpoint of the target, we find that A-model and B-model on M unify in the topological membrane theory through the Penrose–Ward transform. The partition function is constructed and it is shown that, in the weak-coupling regime, it is equal to the partition function of Donaldson-Witten theory. Additionally, homological mirror symmetry, background independence as well as role of knot cobordisms as topological two-branes is discussed. It is outlined that all types of Floer homology are part of the topological membrane theory. Additionally, we find evidence that in the non-perturbative regime, the partition function of the membrane field action and that of the partially twisted (2,0) SU(N) superconformal field theory on the worldvolume of N topological fivebranes must coincide.