The real topological vertex at work

We develop the real vertex formalism for the computation of the topological string partition function with D-branes and O-planes at the fixed point locus of an anti-holomorphic involution acting non-trivially on the toric diagram of any local toric Calabi-Yau manifold. Our results cover in particular the real vertex with non-trivial fixed leg. We give a careful derivation of the relevant ingredients using duality with Chern-Simons theory on orbifolds. We show that the real vertex can also be interpreted in terms of a statistical model of symmetric crystal melting. Using this latter connection, we also assess the constant map contribution in Calabi-Yau orientifold models. We find that there are no perturbative contributions beyond one-loop, but a non-trivial sum over non-perturbative sectors, which we compare with the non-perturbative contribution to the closed string expansion. © 2010 Elsevier B.V