Gromov-Witten invariants of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds

Abstract

Based on the large N duality relating topological string theory on Calabi-Yau 3-folds and Chern-Simons theory on 3-manifolds, M. Aganagic, A. Klemm, M. Marino and C. Vafa proposed the topological vertex (hep-th/0305132), an algorithm on computing Gromov-Witten invariants in all genera of any non-singular toric Calabi-Yau 3-fold. In this expository article, we describe the mathematical theory of the topological vertex developed by J. Li, K. Liu, J. Zhou, and the author (math/0408426).