New heterotic torsional geometries are constructed as orbifolds of T^ 2 bundles over K3. The discrete symmetries considered can be freely-acting or have fixed points and/or fixed curves. We give explicit constructions when the base K3 is Kummer or algebraic. The orbifold geometries can preserve N= 1, 2 supersymmetry in four dimensions or be non-supersymmetric.

Based on examples from superstring/D-brane theory since the work of Douglas and Moore on resolution of singularities of a superstring target-space Y via a D-brane probe, the richness and the complexity of the stack of punctual D0-branes on a variety, and as a guiding question, we lay down a conjecture that any resolution Y of a variety Y over Y can be factored through an embedding of Y into the stack Y of punctual D0-branes of rank Y on Y for Y in Y , where Y depends on the germ of singularities of Y . We prove that this conjecture holds for the resolution Y of a reduced singular curve Y over Y . In string-theoretical language, this says that the resolution Y of a singular curve Y always arises from an appropriate D0-brane aggregation on Y and that the rank of the Chan-Paton module of the D0-branes involved can be chosen to be arbitrarily large.

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We give close formulas for the counting functions of rational curves on complete intesection Calabi-Yau manifolds in terms of special solutions of generalized hypergeometric differential systems. For the one modulus cases we derive a differential equation for the Mirror map, which can be viewed as a generalization of the Schwarzian equation. We also derive a nonlinear seventh order differential equation which directly governs the Prepotential.

We explore the tunneling behavior of a quantum particle on a finite graph in the presence of an asymptotically large potential with two or three potential wells. The behavior of the particle is primarily governed by the local spectral symmetry of the graph around the wells. In the case of two wells the behavior is stable in the sense that it can be predicted from a sufficiently large neighborhood of the wells. However in the case of three wells we are able to exhibit examples where the tunneling behavior can be changed significantly by perturbing the graph arbitrarily far from the wells.