Rationality and symmetry of stable pairs generating series of Fano 3-folds

Abstract

The generating series of descendent invariants of stable pairs on 3-folds is conjectured to be rational and to satisfy a $q\leftrightarrow q^{-1}$ symmetry. We prove this conjecture for Fano 3-folds. We utilize the same path of stability conditions that Toda used in his proof of the Calabi--Yau version of the conjecture, relating stable pairs and $L$ invariants, and work of the two authors that allows an extension of Joyce's descendent wall-crossing formula to non-standard hearts of $D^b(X)$. We use Ehrhart theory to deal with the combinatorics coming out of the wall-crossing formula. Furthermore, we specialize the wall-crossing formula to primary insertions and prove a strong rationality result predicted by the Pandharipande--Thomas/Gopakumar--Vafa correspondence.