English
Related papers

Related papers: Three-Dimensional Chern-Simons and BF Theories

200 papers

The covariant canonical formalism for four-dimensional BF theory is performed. The aim of the paper is to understand in the context of the covariant canonical formalism both the reducibility that some first class constraints have in Dirac's…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2007-05-23 Mauricio Mondragon , Merced Montesinos

Topological Chern-Simons (CS) and BF theories and their holomorphic analogues are discussed in terms of de Rham and Dolbeault cohomologies. We show that Cech cohomology provides another useful description of the above topological and…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2007-05-23 T. A. Ivanova , A. D. Popov

We discuss the relations between (topological) quantum field theories in 4 dimensions and the theory of 2-knots (embedded 2-spheres in a 4-manifold). The so-called BF theories allow the construction of quantum operators whose trace can be…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2007-05-23 P. Cotta-Ramusino , M. Martellini

A class of topological field theories like the $BF$ model and Chern-Simons theory, when quantized in the Landau gauge, enjoys the property of invariance under a vector supersymmetry, which is responsible for their finiteness. We introduce a…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2008-11-26 P. Valtancoli

The purpose of this article is to study the correspondence between $3d$-gravity and the Chern-Simons field theory from the perspective of geometric mechanics, specifically in the case where the structure group is the general affine group.…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2023-07-20 Santiago Capriotti

In this paper we discuss topological BF theories in 3 and 4 dimensions. Observables are associated to ordinary knots and links (in 3 dimensions) and to 2-knots (in 4 dimensions). The vacuum expectation values of such observables give a wide…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2010-11-01 Aberto S. Cattaneo , Paolo Cotta-Ramusino , Juerg Froehlich , Maurizio Martellini

We discuss unifying features of topological field theories in 2, 3 and 4 dimensions. This includes relations among enumerative geometry (2d topological field theory) link invariants (3d Chern-Simons theory) and Donaldson invariants (4d…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2007-05-23 Cumrun Vafa

A new discretisation of a doubled, i.e. BF, version of the pure abelian Chern-Simons theory is presented. It reproduces the continuum expressions for the topological quantities of interest in the theory, namely the partition function and…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2009-10-30 David H. Adams

The U(1) BF Quantum Field Theory is revisited in the light of Deligne-Beilinson Cohomology. We show how the U(1) Chern-Simons partition function is related to the BF one and how the latter on its turn coincides with an abelian Turaev-Viro…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2017-06-07 P. Mathieu , F. Thuillier

A generalization of Wilson loop observables for BF theories in any dimension is introduced in the Batalin-Vilkovisky framework. The expectation values of these observables are cohomology classes of the space of imbeddings of a circle. One…

Quantum Algebra · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Alberto S. Cattaneo , Paolo Cotta-Ramusino , Carlo A. Rossi

Motivated by the six dimensional formulation of Kodaira-Spencer theory for Calabi-Yau threefolds, we formulate a two dimensional version and argue that this is the relevant field theory for the target space of local topological B-model with…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2007-11-14 Robbert Dijkgraaf , Cumrun Vafa

It is a long-standing question to extend the definition of 3-dimensional Chern-Simons theory to one which associates values to 1-manifolds with boundary and to 0-manifolds. We provide a solution in case the gauge group is a torus. We also…

Algebraic Topology · Mathematics 2009-06-19 Daniel S. Freed , Michael J. Hopkins , Jacob Lurie , Constantin Teleman

Our recent paper~\cite{FST} with Claudia Scheimbauer uses the cobordism hypothesis to construct fully local Chern-Simons theories. Here we expose some physics motivations: Yang-Mills plus Chern-Simons in the bosonic case and the free…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2026-05-29 Daniel S. Freed , Constantin Teleman

We consider three-dimensional N=2 superconformal field theories on a three-sphere and analyze their free energy F as a function of background gauge and supergravity fields. A crucial role is played by certain local terms in these background…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2015-06-05 Cyril Closset , Thomas T. Dumitrescu , Guido Festuccia , Zohar Komargodski , Nathan Seiberg

We describe constructing solutions of the field equations of Chern-Simons and topological BF theories in terms of deformation theory of locally constant (flat) bundles. Maps of flat connections into one another (dressing transformations)…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2017-02-08 Tatiana A. Ivanova , Alexander D. Popov

We present an elementary review of some aspects of Chern-Simons theory with complex gauge group SL(N,C). We discuss some of the challenges in defining the theory as a full-fledged TQFT, as well as some successes inspired by the 3d-3d…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2017-10-25 Tudor Dimofte

Classical three dimensional Yang-Mills is seen to be related to the topological Chern-Simons term through a nonlinear but fully local and covariant gauge field redefinition. A classical recursive cohomological argument is provided.

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2009-10-30 V. E. R. Lemes , C. Linhares de Jesus , C. A. G. Sasaki , S. P. Sorella , L. C. Q. Vilar , O. S. Ventura

Motivated by some previously known facts from mathematical and physics literature, we explore certain relations between 3-dimensional topological gauge theories with continuous and finite gauge groups, commonly known as Chern-Simons (CS)…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2025-12-15 Thomas Nicosanti , Pavel Putrov , Johann Quenta-Raygada

In this work we discuss the construction of "simplicial BF theory", the field theory with finite-dimensional space of fields, associated to a triangulated manifold, that is in a sense equivalent to topological BF theory on the manifold…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2007-05-23 Pavel Mnev

In this paper we discuss decomposition in the context of three-dimensional Chern-Simons theories. Specifically, we argue that a Chern-Simons theory with a gauged noneffectively-acting one-form symmetry is equivalent to a disjoint union of…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2023-03-14 T. Pantev , E. Sharpe