Related papers: Background Fields in 2+1 Topological Gravity
We investigate rotation and rotating structures in (2+1)-dimensional Einstein gravity. We show that rotation generally leads to pathological physical situations.
We show that after the Seiberg-Witten map is performed the action for noncommutative field theories can be regarded as a coupling to a field dependent gravitational background. This gravitational background depends only on the gauge field.…
This note, in a rather expository manner, serves as a conceptional introduction to the certain underlying mathematical structures encoding the geometric quantization formalism and the construction of Witten's quantum invariants, which is in…
We consider a topological field theory derived from the Chern - Simons action in (2+1) dimensions with the I(ISO(2,1)) group,and we investigate in detail the canonical structure of this theory.Originally developed as a topological theory of…
The constraint hypersurfaces defining the Witten and Ashtekar formulations for 2+1 gravity are very different. In particular the constraint hypersurface in the Ashtekar case is not a manifold but consists of several sectors that intersect…
We revisit the construction of self-dual field theory in 4l+2 dimensions using Chern-Simons theory in 4l+3 dimensions, building on the work of Witten. Careful quantization of the Chern-Simons theory reveals all the topological subtleties…
It is generally believed that a full-fledged theory of quantum gravity should exhibit background independence and diffeomorphism invariance. In its most general form, the latter comprises field redefinitions, which are diffeomorphisms in…
We construct a topological field theory which, on the one hand, generalizes BF theories in that there is non-trivial coupling to `topological matter fields'; and, on the other, generalizes the three-dimensional model of Carlip and Gegenberg…
The rank-2 sector of classical $3+1$ dimensional Ashtekar gravity is considered. It is found that the consistency of the evolution equations with the reality of the volume requires that the 3-surface of initial data is foliated by…
At long distances, a gapped phase of matter is described by a topological quantum field theory (TQFT). We conjecture a tight and concrete relationship between the genuine $(d+1)$-partite entanglement -- labelled by a $d$-dimensional…
We use the 1+1+2 covariant approach to clarify a number of aspects of spherically symmetric solutions of non-minimally coupled scalar tensor theories. Particular attention is focused on the extension of Birkhoff's theorem and the nature of…
We study topology change in (2+1)D gravity coupling with non-Abelian SO(2,1) Higgs field from the point of view of Morse theory. It is shown that the Higgs potential can be identified as a Morse function. The critical points of the latter…
We introduce the (2+1)-spacetimes with compact space of genus g and with r gravitating particles which arise by ``Minkowskian suspensions of flat or hyperbolic cone surfaces'', by ``distinguished deformations'' of hyperbolic suspensions and…
We discuss several bosonic topological phases in (3+1) dimensions enriched by a global $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, and gauging the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry. More specifically, following the spirit of the bulk-boundary correspondence, expected…
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 investigate the space ${\cal M}$ of classical solutions to Witten's formulation of 2+1 gravity on the manifold ${\bf R} \times T^2$. ${\cal M}$ is connected, but neither Hausdorff nor a manifold. However, removing from ${\cal M}$ a set…
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…
It is shown that topological massive gravity augmented by the triadic gravitational Chern-Simons first order term is a curved a pure spin-2 action. This model contains two massive spin-2 excitations. However, since its light-front energy is…
We construct invertible field theories generalizing abelian prequantum spin Chern-Simons theory to manifolds of dimension 4k+3 endowed with a Wu structure of degree 2k+2. After analysing the anomalies of a certain discrete symmetry, we…
The physics of quantum gravity is discussed within the framework of topological quantum field theory. Some of the principles are illustrated with examples taken from theories in which space-time is three dimensional.