Related papers: B^F Theory and Flat Spacetimes

We first describe the action of the fundamental group of a closed surface of variable negative curvature on the oriented geodesics in its universal covering in terms of a naturally-defined flat connection whose holonomy lies in the group of…

We investigate the topological theory obtained by twisting the N=(2,2) supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model with target a bihermitian space with torsion. For the special case in which the two complex structures commute, we show that the…

If H is a flat group of automorphisms of finite rank n of a totally disconnected, locally compact group G, then each orbit of H in the metric space B(G) of compact, open subgroups of G is quasi-isometric to n-dimensional euclidean space. In…

A linear connection on a Lie algebroid is called a Cartan connection if it is suitably compatible with the Lie algebroid structure. Here we show that a smooth connected manifold $M$ is locally homogeneous - i.e., admits an atlas of charts…

We present new second derivative, generally covariant theories of gravity for spherically symmetric spacetimes (general covariance is in the $t-r$ plane) belonging to the class where the spherically symmetric Einstein-Hilbert theory is…

Based on Morse theory for the energy functional on path spaces we develop a deformation theory for mapping spaces of spheres into orthogonal groups. This is used to show that these mapping spaces are weakly homotopy equivalent, in a stable…

Let $E$ be a flat Lorentzian space of signature $(2, 1)$. A Margulis space-time is a noncompact complete Lorentz flat $3$-manifold $E/\Gamma$ with a free isometry group $\Gamma$ of rank $g \geq 2$. We consider the case when $\Gamma$…

We study geometric variational problems for a class of effective models in quantum field theory known as Faddeev-Skyrme models. Mathematically one considers minimizing an energy functional on homotopy classes of maps from closed 3-manifolds…

Hiss and Szczepa\'nski proved in 1991 that the holonomy group of any compact flat Riemannian manifold, of dimension at least two, acts reducibly on the rational span of the Euclidean lattice associated with the manifold via the first…

If G is a (connected) complex Lie Group and Z is a generalized flag manifold for G, the the open orbits D of a (connected) real form G_0 of G form an interesting class of complex homogeneous spaces, which play an important role in the…

We consider (flat) Cauchy-complete GH spacetimes, i.e., globally hyperbolic flat lorentzian manifolds admitting some Cauchy hypersurface on which the ambient lorentzian metric restricts as a complete riemannian metric. We define a family of…

The endpoint of this series of papers is to construct the monopole Floer homology for any pair $(Y,\omega)$, where $Y$ is a compact oriented 3-manifold with toroidal boundary and $\omega$ is a suitable closed 2-form. In the first paper, we…

Let G be a connected, compact, semisimple Lie group. It is known that for a compact closed orientable surface $\Sigma$ of genus $l >1$, the order of the group $H^2(\Sigma,\pi_1(G))$ is equal to the number of connected components of the…

Let $M$ be a smooth manifold. We use Chern-Weil theory to study the characteristic classes of principal $G$-bundles built from continuous families of $\pi_{1}(M)$-representations, where $G$ is a compact Lie group. We then relate these…

We consider the quantization of a general spatially homogeneous space-time belonging to an arbitrary but fixed Class A Bianchi type. Exploiting the information furnished by the quantum version of the momentum constraints, we use as…

Deformation K-theory associates to each discrete group G a spectrum built from spaces of finite dimensional unitary representations of G. In all known examples, this spectrum is 2-periodic above the rational cohomological dimension of G…

This paper investigates the relations between the Toda conformal field theories, quantum group theory and the quantisation of moduli spaces of flat connections. We use the free field representation of the $\mathcal{W}$-algebras to define…

We study moduli spaces of flat connections on surfaces with boundary, with boundary conditions given by Lagrangian Lie subalgebras. The resulting symplectic manifolds are closely related with Poisson-Lie groups and their algebraic structure…

The B-twisted topological sigma model coupled to topological gravity is supposed to be described by an ordinary field theory: a type of holomorphic Chern-Simons theory for the open string, and the Kodaira-Spencer theory for the closed…

We consider the region of closed timelike curves (CTC's) in three-dimensional flat Lorentz spacetimes. The interest in this global geometrical feature goes beyond the purely mathematical. Such spacetimes may be considered lower-dimensional…