English

Five-dimensional fermionic Chern-Simons theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2018-04-04 v2

Abstract

We study 5d fermionic CS theory with a fermionic 2-form gauge potential. This theory can be obtained from 5d MSYM theory by performing the maximal topological twist. We put the theory on a five-manifold and compute the partition function. We find that it is a topological quantity, which involves the Ray-Singer torsion of the five-manifold. For abelian gauge group we consider the uplift to the 6d theory and find a mismatch between the 5d partition function and the 6d index, due to the nontrivial dimensional reduction of a selfdual two-form gauge field on a circle. We also discuss an application of the 5d theory to generalized knots made of 2d sheets embedded in 5d.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.02841,
  title  = {Five-dimensional fermionic Chern-Simons theory},
  author = {Dongsu Bak and Andreas Gustavsson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.02841},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

67 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:06:56.978Z