The deformed conifold as a geometry on the space of unit charge CP¹ lumps

The strong structural similarity between the deformed conifold of Candelas and de la Ossa (a noncompact Calabi-Yau manifold) and the moduli space of unit charge CP^1 lumps equipped with its L^2 metric is pointed out. This allows one to reinterpret certain recent results on D3 branes in terms of lump dynamics, and to deduce certain curvature properties of the deformed conifold.