Related papers: Vassiliev Invariants and the Loop States in Quantu…
We consider the $U(1)$ Chern-Simons gauge theory defined in a general closed oriented 3-manifold $M$; the functional integration is used to compute the normalized partition function and the expectation values of the link holonomies. The…
Given a principal fibre bundle with structure group $S$, and a fibre transitive Lie group $G$ of automorphisms thereon, Wang's theorem identifies the invariant connections with certain linear maps $\psi\colon \mathfrak{g}\rightarrow…
We propose that the Chern-Simons invariant of the Ashtekar-Sen connection is the natural internal time coordinate for classical and quantum cosmology. The reasons for this are a number of interesting properties of this functional, which we…
We study several aspects of the canonical quantization of supergravity in terms of the Asthekar variables. We cast the theory in terms of a $GSU(2)$ connection and we introduce a loop representation. The solution space is similar to the…
We present a consistent way of coupling three-dimensional Maxwell Chern-Simons gravity theory with massless spin-$\frac{5}{2}$ gauge fields. We first introduce the simplest hyper-Maxwell Chern-Simons gravity containing two massless spin-2…
We discuss the theory of knots, and describe how knot invariants arise naturally in gravitational physics. The focus of this review is to delineate the relationship between knot theory and the loop representation of non-perturbative…
We prove that if $\frak{g}^{\prime}$ is a contraction of a Lie algebra $\frak{g}$ then the number of functionally independent invariants of $\frak{g}^{\prime}$ is at least that of $\frak{g}$. This allows to determine explicitly the number…
We study three-dimensional Chern-Simons theory with complex gauge group SL(2,C), which has many interesting connections with three-dimensional quantum gravity and geometry of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. We show that, in the presence of a single…
The Wilson loop functionals in terms of Ashtekar's variables were the first (formal) solutions to the quantized hamiltonian constraint of canonical gravity. Here it is shown that the same functionals also solve the supergravity constraints…
We provide Vasiliev's fully nonlinear equations of motion for bosonic gauge fields in four spacetime dimensions with an action principle. We first extend Vasiliev's original system with differential forms in degrees higher than one. We then…
We apply the ideas of Alvarez and Labastida to the invariant of spin networks defined by Witten and Martin based on Chern-Simons theory. We show that it is possible to define ambient invariants of spin networks that (for the case of SU(2))…
In the canonical quantization of gravity in terms of the Ashtekar variables one uses paths in the 3-space to construct the quantum states. Usually, one restricts oneself to families of paths admitting only finite number of isolated…
We recover the family of non-semisimple quantum invariants of closed oriented 3-manifolds associated with the small quantum group of $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ using purely combinatorial methods based on Temperley-Lieb algebras and Kauffman bracket…
We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the consistency of the supertrace, through the existence of a certain ground state projector. We build this projector and check its properties to the first two orders in the number…
We propose a program for bridging the gap between the perturbative BV-BFV quantization of Chern-Simons theory and the non-perturbative Reshetikhin-Turaev (RT) invariants of 3-manifolds, passing through factorization homology of…
We show that (equivariant) K-theoretic 3-point Gromov-Witten invariants of genus zero on a Grassmann variety are equal to triple intersections computed in the ordinary (equivariant) K-theory of a two-step flag manifold, thus generalizing an…
We describe recent achievements in the theory of weight systems, which are functions on chord diagrams satisfying so-called $4$-term relations. Our main attention is devoted to constructions of weight systems. The two main sources of these…
The new idea of flip invariance of action functionals in multidimensional lattices was recently highlighted as a key feature of discrete integrable systems. Flip invariance was proved for several particular cases of integrable…
We first exhibit in the commutative case the simple algebraic relations between the algebra of functions on a manifold and its infinitesimal length element $ds$. Its unitary representations correspond to Riemannian metrics and Spin…
We give a purely topological definition of the perturbative quantum invariants of links and 3-manifolds associated with Chern-Simons field theory. Our definition is as close as possible to one given by Kontsevich. We will also establish…