The spectrum of BPS branes on a noncompact Calabi-Yau

Michael R. Douglas, Bartomeu Fiol, Christian Römelsberger

Published 2000-03-28, updated 2000-06-08Version 2

We begin the study of the spectrum of BPS branes and its variation on lines of marginal stability on O_P^2(-3), a Calabi-Yau ALE space asymptotic to C^3/Z_3. We show how to get the complete spectrum near the large volume limit and near the orbifold point, and find a striking similarity between the descriptions of holomorphic bundles and BPS branes in these two limits. We use these results to develop a general picture of the spectrum. We also suggest a generalization of some of the ideas to the quintic Calabi-Yau.