English

Quantum Chern-Simons theories on cylinders: BV-BFV partition functions

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-02-14 v3 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We compute partition functions of Chern-Simons type theories for cylindrical spacetimes I×ΣI \times \Sigma, with II an interval and dimΣ=4l+2\dim \Sigma = 4l+2, in the BV-BFV formalism (a refinement of the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism adapted to manifolds with boundary and cutting-gluing). The case dimΣ=0\dim \Sigma = 0 is considered as a toy example. We show that one can identify - for certain choices of residual fields - the "physical part" (restriction to degree zero fields) of the BV-BFV effective action with the Hamilton-Jacobi action computed in the companion paper [arXiv:2012.13270], without any quantum corrections. This Hamilton-Jacobi action is the action functional of a conformal field theory on Σ\Sigma. For dimΣ=2\dim \Sigma = 2, this implies a version of the CS-WZW correspondence. For dimΣ=6\dim \Sigma = 6, using a particular polarization on one end of the cylinder, the Chern-Simons partition function is related to Kodaira-Spencer gravity (a.k.a. BCOV theory); this provides a BV-BFV quantum perspective on the semiclassical result by Gerasimov and Shatashvili.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.13983,
  title  = {Quantum Chern-Simons theories on cylinders: BV-BFV partition functions},
  author = {Alberto S. Cattaneo and Pavel Mnev and Konstantin Wernli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.13983},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

81 pages, 11 figures. v.2: updated references. v.3: small expository changes

R2 v1 2026-06-23T21:27:44.008Z