Related papers: Two-dimensional topological field theories coupled…
Integration of Kirillov form on a coadjoint orbit of Virasoro algebra yields the coupling of a background field to Polyakov's two dimensional quantum gravity. This background field is used to be called the diffeomorphism field. Einstein's…
We show that two-dimensional SO(N) and Sp(N) Yang-Mills theories without fermions can be interpreted as closed string theories. The terms in the 1/N expansion of the partition function on an orientable or nonorientable manifold M can be…
It is shown that two$(1 + 1)$-dimensional (2D) free Abelian- and self-interacting non-Abelian gauge theories (without any interaction with matter fields) belong to a new class of topological field theories. These new theories capture…
Topological phases of matter are described universally by topological field theories in the same way that symmetry-breaking phases of matter are described by Landau-Ginzburg field theories. We propose that topological insulators in two and…
We describe a class of six-dimensional conformal field theories that have some properties in common with and possibly are related to a subsector of the tensionless string theories. The latter theories can for example give rise to…
We study the quantization of a holomorphic two-form coupled to a Yang-Mills field on special manifolds in various dimensions, and we show that it yields twisted supersymmetric theories. The construction determines ATQFT's (Almost…
Topological defects and operators give a far-reaching generalization of symmetries of quantum fields. An auxiliary topological field theory in one dimension higher than the QFT of interest, known as the SymTFT, provides a natural way for…
The uniqueness theorems for general relativity and Yang-Mills theories can be circumvented by dropping the ubiquitous, yet often implicit, assumption that physical fields, such as the spacetime metric, are fundamental. The novel concept of…
A direct relation between two types of topological field theories, Chern-Simons theory and BF theory, is presented by using ``Generalized Differential Calculus'', which extends an ordinary p-form to an ordered pair of p and (p+1)-form. We…
Studying a quantum field theory involves a choice of space-time manifold and a choice of background for any global symmetries of the theory. We argue that many more choices are possible when specifying the background. In the context of…
We build nearly topological quantum field theories in various dimensions. We give special attention to the case of 8 dimensions for which we first consider theories depending only on Yang-Mills fields. Two classes of gauge functions exist…
In this work, we propose a topological quantum field theory phase for four-dimensional gravity. We show it is able to generate, not only General Relativity, but the whole family of Lovelock-Cartan theories of gravity. This is accomplished…
We study two-dimensional non-abelian BF theory in Lorenz gauge and prove that it is a topological conformal field theory. This opens the possibility to compute topological string amplitudes (Gromov-Witten invariants). We found that the…
This paper studies novel four-dimensional integrable field theories that are deformations of self-dual Yang-Mills. They are engineered by considering holomorphic Chern-Simons and BF type theories on covers of twistor space obtained by…
The idea of treating general relativistic theories in a perturbative expansion around a topological theory has been recently put forward in the quantum gravity literature. Here we investigate the viability of this idea, by applying it to…
The theory of embedded random surfaces, equivalent to two--dimensional quantum gravity coupled to matter, is reviewed, further developed and partly generalized to four dimensions. It is shown that the action of the Liouville field theory…
Higher dimensional generalisations of self-duality conditions and of theta angle terms are analysed in Yang-Mills theories. For the theory on a torus, the torus metric and various antisymmetric tensors are viewed as coupling constants…
A method for systematically including topological degrees of freedom in perturbation theory is developed. This is not bound by the restrictions of semi-classical techniques. The Yang-Mills theory in three Euclidean dimensions is considered…
We consider the general free field theory such that system of equations of motion includes a subsystem with a special property. If the subsystem is considered by itself, it would be a topological field theory having no local degrees of…
Two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) can be defined through its correlation functions. These must satisfy certain consistency conditions which arise from the cutting of world sheets along circles or intervals. The construction of a…