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This is a survey on the equivariant cohomology of Lie group actions on manifolds, from the point of view of de Rham theory. Emphasis is put on the notion of equivariant formality, as well as on applications to ordinary cohomology and to…
We observe a new equivariant relationship between topological Hochschild homology and cohomology. We also calculate the topological Hochschild homology of the topological Hochschild cohomology of a finite prime field, which can be viewed as…
It is argued that quantum gravity has an interpretation as a topological field theory provided a certain constraint from the path intergral measure is respected. The constraint forces us to couple gauge and matter fields to gravity for…
The cohomological approach to the problem of consistent interactions between fields with a gauge freedom is reviewed. The role played by the BRST symmetry is explained. Applications to massless vector fields and 2-form gauge fields are…
We summarize some recent results obtained in collaboration with J. McCarthy on the spectrum of physical states in $W_3$ gravity coupled to $c=2$ matter. We show that the space of physical states, defined as a semi-infinite (or BRST)…
We show that some higher derivative theories have a BRST symmetry. This symmetry is due to the higher derivative structure and is not associated to any gauge invariance. If physical states are defined as those in the BRST cohomology then…
The BRST algebra of supergravity is characterized by two different bilinears of the commuting supersymmetry ghosts: a vector $\gamma^\mu$ and a scalar $\phi$, the latter valued in the Yang-Mills Lie algebra. We observe that under BRST…
We revisit the gravity path integral formalism of JT gravity. We explain how to gauge fix the path integral in the presence of asymptotic boundaries and conical defects, and resolve an ambiguity regarding the dilaton gravity operator that…
In this paper we revisit the topological twisted sigma model with H-flux. We explicitly expand and then twist the worldsheet Lagrangian for bi-Hermitian geometry. we show that the resulting action consists of a BRST exact term and pullback…
The issues of quintessence and cosmic acceleration can be discussed in the framework of $F(R, {\cal G})$ theories of gravity where $R$ is the Ricci curvature scalar and ${\cal G}$ is the Gauss-Bonnet topological invariant. It is possible to…
Supersymmetric field theories can be studied exactly on suitable off-shell supergravity backgrounds. We show that in two dimensions such backgrounds are identifiable with BRST invariant backgrounds of topological gravity coupled to an…
We perform the manifestly covariant quantization of $f(R)$ gravity in the de Donder gauge condition (or harmonic gauge condition) for general coordinate invariance. We explicitly calculate various equal-time commutation relations (ETCRs),…
The geometrical nature of gravity emerges from the universality dictated by the equivalence principle. In the usual formulation of General Relativity, the geometrisation of the gravitational interaction is performed in terms of the…
In the study of the Type II superstring, it is useful to consider the BRST complex associated to the sum of two pure spinors. The cohomology of this complex is an infinite-dimensional vector space. It is also a finite-dimensional algebra…
All consistent interactions in a three-dimensional theory with tensor gauge fields of degrees two and three are obtained by means of the deformation of the solution to the master equation combined with cohomological techniques. The local…
I summarize some recent results obtained in collaboration with P.~Bouwknegt and K.~Pilch on the spectrum of physical states in $\cW_3$ gravity coupled to $c=2$ matter. In particular, it is shown that the algebra of operators corresponding…
We present the geometric foundations and derivations of equations of motion for symmetric teleparallel theories of gravity in the coincident gauge and covariant frameworks. We discuss the theoretical challenges introduced by the auxiliary…
String backgrounds are described as purely geometric objects related to moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces, in the spirit of Segal's definition of a conformal field theory. Relations with conformal field theory, topological field theory and…
We discuss the f(R)-theories of gravity with torsion in the framework of jet-bundles. Such an approach is particularly useful since the components of the torsion and curvature tensors can be chosen as fiber jet-coordinates on the bundles…
In this paper a topological theory of gravity is studied on a four-manifold using the formalism of Capovilla {\sl et al}. We show that it is fact equivalent to Anselmi and Fre's topological gravity using the topological symmetries. Using…