Homotopy colimits and global observables in Abelian gauge theory
Mathematical Physics
2015-08-10 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory
Algebraic Topology
Category Theory
math.MP
Abstract
We study chain complexes of field configurations and observables for Abelian gauge theory on contractible manifolds, and show that they can be extended to non-contractible manifolds by using techniques from homotopy theory. The extension prescription yields functors from a category of manifolds to suitable categories of chain complexes. The extended functors properly describe the global field and observable content of Abelian gauge theory, while the original gauge field configurations and observables on contractible manifolds are recovered up to a natural weak equivalence.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1503.08839,
title = {Homotopy colimits and global observables in Abelian gauge theory},
author = {Marco Benini and Alexander Schenkel and Richard J. Szabo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.08839},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
24 pages. v2: 25 pages, Sections 3.2 and 4.2 expanded, one reference added. Published in Letters in Mathematical Physics