Related papers: Classical Chern-Simons theory, Part 1
A brief introduction to Topological Quantum Field Theory as well as a description of recent progress made in the field is presented. I concentrate mainly on the connection between Chern-Simons gauge theory and Vassiliev invariants, and…
Topological field theories and holomorphic field theories naturally appear in both mathematics and physics. However, there exist intriguing hybrid theories that are topological in some directions and holomorphic in others, such as twists of…
We consider quantum field theories on supermanifolds using integral forms. The latter are used to define a geometric theory of integration and they are essential for a consistent action principle. The construction relies on Picture Changing…
Chern-Simons gauge theory is formulated on three dimensional $Z_2$ orbifolds. The locus of singular points on a given orbifold is equivalent to a link of Wilson lines. This allows one to reduce any correlation function on orbifolds to a sum…
In this thesis Chern-Simons theories based on Lie algebras with invariant metric are constructed. It is discussed how contractions lead systematically to (higher spin) kinematical algebras of, e.g., Poincar\'e, Galilei and Carroll type and…
We rederive the recently introduced $N=2$ topological gauge theories, representing the Euler characteristic of moduli spaces ${\cal M}$ of connections, from supersymmetric quantum mechanics on the infinite dimensional spaces ${\cal A}/{\cal…
We express the first jet bundle of curves in Euclidean space as homogeneous spaces associated to a Galilean-type group. Certain Cartan connections on a manifold with values in the Lie algebra of the Galilean group are characterized as…
The connection between topology and quantum mechanics is one of the cornerstones of modern physics. Several examples of current interest like the Aharonov-Bohm effect in quantum mechanics, monopoles and instantons in quantum field theory,…
We discuss gauge theory with a topological N=2 symmetry. This theory captures the de Rham complex and Riemannian geometry of some underlying moduli space $\cal M$ and the partition function equals the Euler number of $\cal M$. We explicitly…
I present a brief review on some of the recent developments in topological quantum field theory. These include topological string theory, topological Yang-Mills theory and Chern-Simons gauge theory. It is emphasized how the application of…
We explicitly determine the symplectic structure on the phase space of Chern-Simons theory with gauge group $G\ltimes g^*$ on a three-manifold of topology $R \times S$, where $S$ is a surface of genus $g$ with $n+1$ punctures. At each…
This work unveils a novel and fundamental connection between structured light and topological field theory by showing how the natural geometrical setting for paraxial vector beams is that of a $SU(2)$ principal bundle over…
The existence of the theory of `twisted cotangent bundles' (symplectic groupoids) allows to study classical mechanical systems which are generalized in the sense that their configurations form a Poisson manifold. It is natural to study from…
We reconsider Chern-Simons gauge theory on a Seifert manifold M (the total space of a nontrivial circle bundle over a Riemann surface). When M is a Seifert manifold, Lawrence and Rozansky have shown from the exact solution of Chern-Simons…
Witten introduced classical Chern-Simons theory to topology in 1989, when he defined an invariant for knots in 3-manifolds by an integral over a certain infinite-dimensional space, which up to today have not been entirely understood.…
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…
Topological field theories of Schwarz-type generally admit symmetries whose algebra does not close off-shell, e.g. the basic symmetries of BF models or vector supersymmetry of the gauge-fixed action for Chern-Simons theory (this symmetry…
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…
In this note, we extend the theory of Chern-Cheeger-Simons to construct canonical invariants for a one-parameter family of flat connections on a smooth manifold. These invariants lie in degrees $(2p-2)$-cohomology with $\C/\Z$-cohomology,…
For each connected complex reductive group G, we find a family of new examples of complex quasi-Hamiltonian G-spaces with G-valued moment maps. These spaces arise naturally as moduli spaces of (suitably framed) meromorphic connections on…