Gravitational corrections in supersymmetric gauge theory and matrix models -: art. no. 051

Gravitational corrections in N = 1 and N = 2 supersymmetric gauge theories are obtained from topological string amplitudes. We show how they are recovered in matrix model computations. This provides a test of the proposal by Dijkgraaf and Vafa beyond the planar limit. Both, matrix model and topological string theory, are used to check a conjecture of Nekrasov concerning these gravitational couplings in Seiberg-Witten theory. Our analysis is performed for those gauge theories which are related to the cubic matrix model, i.e. pure SU(2) Seiberg-Witten theory and N = 2 U(N) SYM broken to N = 1 via a cubic superpotential. We outline the computation of the topological amplitudes for the local Calabi-Yau manifolds which are relevant for these two cases.