The Burton-Cabrera-Frank (BCF) model for the flow of line defects (steps) on crystal surfaces has offered useful insights into nanostructure evolution. This model has rested on phenomenological grounds. Our goal is to show via scaling arguments the emergence of the BCF theory for noninteracting steps from a stochastic atomistic scheme of a kinetic restricted solid-on-solid model in one spatial dimension. Our main assumptions are: adsorbed atoms (adatoms) form a dilute system, and elastic effects of the crystal lattice are absent. The step edge is treated as a front that propagates via probabilistic rules for atom attachment and detachment at the step. We formally derive a quasistatic step flow description by averaging out the stochastic scheme when terrace diffusion, adatom desorption, and deposition from above are present.

The boundary of symmetry-protected topological states (SPTs) can harbor new quantum anomaly phenomena. In this work, we characterize the bosonic anomalies introduced by the 1+1D non-onsite-symmetric gapless edge modes of 2+1D bulk bosonic SPTs with a generic finite Abelian group symmetry (isomorphic to G=∏iZNi=ZN1×ZN2×ZN3×...). We demonstrate that some classes of SPTs (termed "Type II") trap fractional quantum numbers (such as fractional ZN charges) at the 0D kink of the symmetry-breaking domain walls; while some classes of SPTs (termed "Type III") have degenerate zero energy modes (carrying the projective representation protected by the unbroken part of the symmetry), either near the 0D kink of a symmetry-breaking domain wall, or on a symmetry-preserving 1D system dimensionally reduced from a thin 2D tube with a monodromy defect 1D line embedded. More generally, the energy spectrum and conformal dimensions of gapless edge modes under an external gauge flux insertion (or twisted by a branch cut, i.e., a monodromy defect line) through the 1D ring can distinguish many SPT classes. We provide a manifest correspondence from the physical phenomena, the induced fractional quantum number and the zero energy mode degeneracy, to the mathematical concept of cocycles that appears in the group cohomology classification of SPTs, thus achieving a concrete physical materialization of the cocycles. The aforementioned edge properties are formulated in terms of a long wavelength continuum field theory involving scalar chiral bosons, as well as in terms of Matrix Product Operators and discrete quantum lattice models. Our lattice approach yields a regularization with anomalous non-onsite symmetry for the field theory description. We also formulate some bosonic anomalies in terms of the Goldstone-Wilczek formula.

We classify three fold isolated quotient Gorenstein singularity C^ 3/G . These singularities are rigid, ie there is no non-trivial deformation, and we conjecture that they define 4d C^ 3/G SCFTs which do not have a Coulomb branch.

A bstract M5 branes probing D-type singularities give rise to 6d (1, 0) SCFTs with SO SO flavor symmetry known as D-type conformal matter theories. Gauging the diagonal SO-flavor symmetry leads to a little string theory with an intrinsic scale which can be engineered in F-theory by compactifying on a doubly-elliptic Calabi-Yau manifold. We derive Seiberg-Witten curves for these little string theories which can be interpreted as mirror curves for the corresponding Calabi-Yau manifolds. Under fiber-base duality these models are mapped to D-type quiver gauge theories and we check that their Seiberg-Witten curves match. By taking decompactification limits, we construct the curves for the related 6d SCFTs and connect to known results in the literature by further taking 5d and 4d limits.

In this continuation of [L-Y1],[LLSY],[L-Y2], and [L-Y3](arXiv: 0709.1515 [math. AG], arXiv: 0809.2121 [math. AG], arXiv: 0901.0342 [math. AG], arXiv: 0907.0268 [math. AG]), we study D-branes in a target-space with a fixed B -field background B along the line of the Polchinski-Grothendieck Ansatz, explained in [L-Y1] and further extended in the current work. We focus first on the gauge-field-twist effect of B -field to the Chan-Paton module on D-branes. Basic properties of the moduli space of D-branes, as morphisms from Azumaya schemes with a twisted fundamental module to B , are given. For holomorphic D-strings, we prove a valuation-criterion property of this moduli space. The setting is then extended to take into account also the deformation-quantization-type noncommutative geometry effect of B -field to both the D-brane world-volume and the superstring target-space (-time) B . This brings the notion of twisted B -modules that are realizable as twisted locally-free coherent modules with a flat connection into the study. We use this to realize the notion of both the classical and the quantum spectral covers as morphisms from Azumaya schemes with a fundamental module (with a flat connection in the latter case) in a very special situation. The 3rd theme (subtitled" Sharp vs. Polchinski-Grothendieck") of Sec. 2.2 is to be read with the work [Sh3](arXiv: hep-th/0102197) of Sharp while Sec. 5.2 (subtitled less appropriately" Dijkgraaf-Holland-Sukowski-Vafa vs. Polchinski-Grothendieck") is to be read with the related sections in [DHSV](arXiv: 0709.4446 [hep-th]) and [DHS](arXiv: 0810.4157 [hep-th]) of Dijkgraaf, Hollands, Sukowski, and Vafa.