Related papers: Holomorphic Surface Defects in Four-Dimensional Ch…
We present a unified topological description of anomalies that generalizes the Chern-Simons formulation of Yang-Mills anomalies to encompass all 4-dimensional superconformal anomalies. The key innovation is our characterization of anomalies…
The expectation value of a smooth conformal line defect in a CFT is a conformal invariant functional of its path in space-time. For example, in large $N$ holographic theories, these fundamental observables are dual to the open string…
We consider topological twisting of recently constructed Chern-Simons-matter theories in three dimensions with N=4 or higher supersymmetry. We enumerate physically inequivalent twistings for each N, and find two different twistings for N=4,…
We show that four-dimensional superconformal algebras admit an infinite-dimensional derived enhancement after performing a holomorphic twist. The type of higher symmetry algebras we find are closely related to algebras studied by…
We perform a series of dimensional reductions of the 6d, $\mathcal{N}=(2,0)$ SCFT on $S^2\times\Sigma\times I\times S^1$ down to 2d on $\Sigma$. The reductions are performed in three steps: (i) a reduction on $S^1$ (accompanied by a…
We study a topological field theory in four dimensions on a manifold with boundary. A bulk-boundary interaction is introduced through a novel variational principle rather than explicitly. Through this scheme we find that the boundary values…
This article provides a detailed and rigorous study of $4d$ semi-holomorphic Chern-Simons theories and their associated $2d$ integrable field theories from the homological perspective of $L_\infty$-algebras. Through the use of homotopy…
When 4-dimensional general relativity is extended by a 3-dimensional gravitational Chern-Simons term an apparent violation of diffeormorphism invariance is extinguished by the dynamical equations of motion for the modified theory. The…
The Chern--Simons term is used in the geometric theory of defects. The equilibrium equations with $\delta$-function source are explicitly solved with respect to the $SO(3)$ connection. This solution describes one straight linear…
We discuss the isometry group structure of three-dimensional black holes and Chern-Simons invariants. Aspects of the holographic principle relevant to black hole geometry are analyzed.
The $4$-dimensional semi-holomorphic Chern-Simons theory of Costello and Yamazaki provides a gauge-theoretic origin for the Lax connection of $2$-dimensional integrable field theories. The purpose of this paper is to extend this framework…
For Chern-Simons-matter theories in three dimensions, gauge invariance may require the Chern-Simons level k to be half-integral, in which case parity is violated. As noted by Pasquetti for abelian theories with N=2 supersymmetry, the…
We present and study a model of 4-dimensional higher Chern-Simons theory, special Chern-Simons (SCS) theory, instances of which have appeared in the string literature, whose symmetry is encoded in a skeletal semistrict Lie 2-algebra…
Finding a concrete example holography in four dimensional asymptotically flat space is an important open problem. A natural strategy is to take the flat space limit of the celebrated AdS$_4$/CFT$_3$ correspondence, which relates M-theory in…
The four-dimensional Chern-Simons (CS) theory provides a systematic procedure for realizing two-dimensional integrable field theories. It is therefore a natural question to ask whether integrable deformations of the theories can be realized…
We define a formal Gromov-Witten theory of the quintic 3-fold via localization on CP4. Our main result is a direct geometric proof of holomorphic anomaly equations for the formal quintic in precisely the same form as predicted by B-model…
In the present article we introduce and study a class of topological reflection spaces that we call Kac-Moody symmetric spaces. These generalize Riemannian symmetric spaces of non-compact type. We observe that in a non-spherical Kac-Moody…
A correspondence between three-dimensional flat connections and constant curvature four-dimensional simplices is used to give a novel quantization of geometry via complex SL(2,C) Chern-Simons theory. The resulting quantum geometrical states…
We study SU(N) Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theory in the presence of defects that shift the Chern-Simons level from a holographic point of view by embedding the system in string theory. The model is a D3-D7 system in Type IIB string theory,…
We study three-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric Chern-Simons-matter gauge theories with a one-form symmetry in the $A$-model formalism on $\Sigma_g\times S^1$. We explicitly compute expectation values of topological line operators…