Superstrings and topological strings at large N

Abstract

We embed the large N Chern-Simons/topological string duality in ordinary superstrings. This corresponds to a large N duality between generalized gauge systems with N=1 supersymmetry in four dimensions and superstrings propagating on noncompact Calabi-Yau manifolds with certain fluxes turned on. We also show that in a particular limit of the N=1 gauge theory system, certain superpotential terms in the N=1 system (including deformations if spacetime is noncommutative) are captured to all orders in 1/N by the amplitudes of noncritical bosonic strings propagating on a circle with self-dual radius. We also consider D-brane/anti-D-brane system wrapped over vanishing cycles of compact Calabi-Yau manifolds and argue that at large N they induce a shift in the background to a topologically distinct Calabi-Yau, which we identify as the ground state system of the brane/anti-brane system.