English

Line Operators in $U(1|1)$ Chern-Simons Theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-01-15 v3 Quantum Algebra Representation Theory

Abstract

We analyze the non-semisimple category of line operators in Chern-Simons gauge theories based off the Lie superalgebra gl(11)\mathfrak{gl}(1|1). Our proposal is that the category of line operators C\mathcal{C} can be identified with the derived category of modules for a boundary vertex operator algebra V\mathcal{V} realized as a certain infinite-order simple current extension of the affine current algebra V(gl(11))V(\mathfrak{gl}(1|1)) by boundary monopole operators. By translating this simple current extension of V(gl(11))V(\mathfrak{gl}(1|1)) to the unrolled, restricted quantum group UE(\fgl(11))\overline{U}^E(\fgl(1|1)), we show that our category of line operators admits a second description in terms of a quasi-quantum group A\mathcal{A} realized by uprolling. We also compare our results across an expected physical duality with the cyclic orbifold of a free, BB-twisted hypermultiplet and find a slight discrepancy at the level of braiding and associator. We end with a detailed analysis of coupling to background flat GL(1,\C)GL(1, \C) connections and the resulting category of non-genuine line operators.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.05414,
  title  = {Line Operators in $U(1|1)$ Chern-Simons Theory},
  author = {Niklas Garner and Wenjun Niu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.05414},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

The accepted version for Communications in Mathematical Physics. Corrected an error related to the associator of $\mathcal{A}$. We thank the anonymous referees for very helpful comments!

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:00:25.608Z