4d Crystal Melting, Toric Calabi-Yau 4-Folds and Brane Brick Models

Abstract: We introduce a class of 4-dimensional crystal melting models that count the BPS bound state of branes on toric Calabi-Yau 4-folds. The crystalline structure is determined by the brane brick model associated to the Calabi-Yau 4-fold under consideration or, equivalently, its dual periodic quiver. The crystals provide a discretized version of the underlying toric geometries. We introduce various techniques to visualize crystals and their melting configurations, including 3-dimensional slicing and Hasse diagrams. We illustrate the construction with the D0-D8 system on $\mathbb{C}^4$. Finally, we outline how our proposal generalizes to arbitrary toric CY 4-folds and general brane configurations.