Related papers: Flat extensions of principal connections and the C…

We define a Chern--Simons invariant of connections on stably trivial vector bundles over smooth manifolds, taking values in $3$-forms modulo closed forms with integral cohomology class. We show an additivity property of this invariant for…

A general method for the construction of smooth flat connections on 3-manifolds is introduced. The procedure is strictly connected with the deduction of the fundamental group of a manifold M by means of a Heegaard splitting presentation of…

We show that a flat principal bundle with compact connected structure group and its adjoint bundles of Lie groups have the same cohomology as the trivial bundle, which is done by proving they satisfy the condition for the Leray-Hirsch…

$\rm SL(2,\mathbb{C})$ Chern-Simons theory on a closed 3-manifold is one of the most interesting, yet tractable examples of a QFT. On one hand, its non-perturbative structure is not yet fully understood; on the other, the mathematical…

We consider closed manifolds that admit a metric locally isometric to a product of symmetric planes. For such manifolds, we prove that the Euler characteristic is an obstruction to the existence of flat structures, confirming an old…

Some years ago, it was conjectured by the first author that the Chern-Simons perturbation theory of a 3-manifold at the trivial flat connection is a resurgent power series. We describe completely the resurgent structure of the above series…

We study resurgence properties of partition function of SU(2) Chern-Simons theory (WRT invariant) on closed three-manifolds. We check explicitly that in various examples Borel transforms of asymptotic expansions posses expected analytic…

We propose an extension of the recently-proposed volume conjecture for closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds, to all orders in perturbative expansion. We first derive formulas for the perturbative expansion of the partition function of complex…

We define the notion of spectral network on manifolds of dimension $\le 3$. For a manifold $X$ equipped with a spectral network, we construct equivalences between Chern-Simons invariants of flat ${\mathrm {SL}}(2,{\mathbb C})$-bundles over…

We give a short review of our construction of a higher-loop perturbative invariant of framed 3-manifolds, generalizing the perturbative Chern-Simons invariant of Witten-Axelrod-Singer, associated to an acyclic flat connection, to an…

We present a finite-dimensional and smooth formulation of string structures on spin bundles. It uses trivializations of the Chern-Simons 2-gerbe associated to this bundle. Our formulation is particularly suitable to deal with string…

Complex Chern-Simons bundles are line bundles with connection, originating in the study of quantization of moduli spaces of flat connections with complex gauge groups. In this paper we introduce and study these bundles in the families…

Given a 3-manifold that can be written as the double of a compression body, we compute the Chern-Simons critical values for arbitrary compact connected structure groups. We also show that the moduli space of flat connections is connected…

We extend finite dimensional Chern-Simons theory to certain infinite dimensional principal bundles with connections, in particular to the frame bundle $FLM\to LM$ over the loop space of a Riemannian manifold $M$. Chern-Simons forms are…

In this note we define Chern-Simons classes of a superconnection $D+L$ on a complex supervector bundle $E$ such that $D$ is flat and preserves the grading, and $L$ is an odd endomorphism of $E$ on a supermanifold. As an application we…

We introduce a symplectic structure on the space of connections in a G-principal bundle over a four-manifold and the Hamiltonian action on it of the group of gauge transformations which are trivial on the boundary. The symplectic reduction…

The relationship between the Chern-Simons invariant and eta-invariant of a 3-manifold is shown to lead to an obstruction to a group being the fundamental group of a closed oriented 3-manifold. The proof uses Sunada's construction of…

Let $f: X \to S$ be flat morphism over an algebraically closed field $k$ with a relative normal crossings divisor $Y\subset X$, $(E, \nabla)$ be a bundle with a connection with log poles along $Y$ and curvature with values in…

Chern-Simons invariants of closed oriented Riemannian $3$-manifolds are introduced and studied from the basics. Their first-order variation is the Cotton tensor. The properties of the Cotton tensor: symmetry, conformal covariance, trace-…

We introduce a pre-symplectic structure on the space of connections in a G-principal bundle over a four-manifold and a Hamiltonian action on it of the group of gauge transformations that are trivial on the boundary. The moment map is given…