D-branes, surface operators, and ADHM quiver representations

Abstract: A supersymmetric quantum mechanical model is constructed for BPS states bound to surface operators in five dimensional SU(r) gauge theories using D-brane engineering. This model represents the effective action of a certain D2-brane configuration, and is naturally obtained by dimensional reduction of a quiver $(0,2)$ gauged linear sigma model. In a special stability chamber, the resulting moduli space of quiver representations is shown to be virtually smooth and isomorphic to a moduli space of framed quotients on the projective plane. A precise conjecture relating a K-theoretic partition function of this moduli space to refined open string invariants of toric lagrangian branes is formulated for conifold and local P^1 x P^1 geometries.