Integrality structures in topological strings I: framed unknot

Abstract

We study the open string integrality invariants (LMOV invariants) for toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds with Aganagic-Vafa brane (AV-brane). In this paper, we focus on the case of the resolved conifold with one out AV-brane in any integer framing $τ$, which is the large $N$ duality of the Chern-Simons theory for a framed unknot with integer framing $τ$ in $S^3$. We compute the explicit formulas for the LMOV invariants in genus $g=0$ with any number of holes, and prove their integrality. For the higher genus LMOV invariants with one hole, they are reformulated into a generating function $g_{m}(q,a)$, and we prove that $g_{m}(q,a)\in (q^{1/2}-q^{-1/2})^{-2}\mathbb{Z}[(q^{1/2}-q^{-1/2})^2,a^{\pm 1/2}]$ for any integer $m\geq 1$. As a by product, we compute the reduced open string partition function of $\mathbb{C}^3$ with one AV-brane in framing $τ$. We find that, for $τ\leq -1$, this open string partition function is equivalent to the Hilbert-Poincaré series of the Cohomological Hall algebra of the $|τ|$-loop quiver. It gives an open string GW/DT correspondence.

v2: 32 pages, minor corrections