# Backreacting D-brane instantons on branes at singularities

## TL;DR

This paper explores how D-brane instantons influence the geometry and gauge theories in string compactifications, extending previous models to include charged instantons and their backreaction effects, with concrete examples involving D6-branes and D2-instantons.

## Contribution

It introduces a framework for understanding backreacted geometries of charged D-brane instantons and their impact on 4d gauge theories, using graph operations in dimer diagrams.

## Key findings

- Backreaction of D2-instantons causes D6-brane recombination.
- Charged instanton effects produce specific operators in the 4d effective action.
- Graph operations in dimer diagrams encode backreacted geometries and operators.

## Abstract

Non-perturbative D-brane instanton effects in 4d N = 1 string compactifications can be geometrized in terms of a backreacted generalized geometry. We extend earlier results to setups in which the D-brane instanton is charged under the 4d gauge symmetries, and show that the backreacted topology yields the correct charged field theory operators in the 4d effective action. In type IIA models with D6-branes, the backreaction of D2-brane instantons forces the recombination of D6-branes, such that the 4d charged field theory operators arise from basic worldsheet instantons in the backreacted geometry. We provide large classes of examples of D2-brane instanton effects on intersecting D6-brane systems in local models mirror to D3-branes at singularities. The backreacted geometry and the field theory operators are easily encoded in terms of simple operation in the graphs arising from the underlying dimer diagrams. This description agrees, in the appropriate cases, with the complex deformations triggered by certain fractional branes at the bottom of duality cascades.