What do Gromov-Witten invariants (of say a Calabi-Yau 3-fold) represent, or what are they supposed to represent, in terms of string theory? When I compute GW invariants, am I actually computing some interactions between some particles, or what ...?
Please be gentle, and use only undergraduate-level physics words, if possible. (Perhaps this is too much to ask! Ok well, I'd rather get a response that involves fancier physics words than no response at all.)
I suppose this question is more physics than math -- I hope that's ok.
