TY - RPRT T1 - Black Holes, Instanton Counting on Toric Singularities and q-Deformed Two-Dimensional Yang-Mills Theory Y1 - 2007 A1 - Luca Griguolo A1 - Domenico Seminara A1 - Richard J. Szabo A1 - Alessandro Tanzini AB - We study the relationship between instanton counting in N=4 Yang-Mills theory on a generic four-dimensional toric orbifold and the semi-classical expansion of q-deformed Yang-Mills theory on the blowups of the minimal resolution of the orbifold singularity, with an eye to clarifying the recent proposal of using two-dimensional gauge theories to count microstates of black holes in four dimensions. We describe explicitly the instanton contributions to the counting of D-brane bound states which are captured by the two-dimensional gauge theory. We derive an intimate relationship between the two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory and Chern-Simons theory on generic Lens spaces, and use it to show that the correct instanton counting is only reproduced when the Chern-Simons contributions are treated as non-dynamical boundary conditions in the D4-brane gauge theory. We also use this correspondence to discuss the counting of instantons on higher genus ruled Riemann surfaces. JF - Nucl. Phys. B 772 (2007) 1-24 UR - http://hdl.handle.net/1963/1888 U1 - 2347 U2 - Mathematics U3 - Mathematical Physics ER -