English

The ABCD of topological recursion

Mathematical Physics 2024-02-15 v5 Algebraic Geometry math.MP Symplectic Geometry

Abstract

Kontsevich and Soibelman reformulated and slightly generalised the topological recursion of math-ph/0702045, seeing it as a quantization of certain quadratic Lagrangians in TVT^*V for some vector space VV. KS topological recursion is a procedure which takes as initial data a quantum Airy structure -- a family of at most quadratic differential operators on VV satisfying some axioms -- and gives as outcome a formal series of functions in VV (the partition function) simultaneously annihilated by these operators. Finding and classifying quantum Airy structures modulo gauge group action, is by itself an interesting problem which we study here. We provide some elementary, Lie-algebraic tools to address this problem, and give some elements of classification for dimV=2{\rm dim}\,V = 2. We also describe four more interesting classes of quantum Airy structures, coming from respectively Frobenius algebras (here we retrieve the 2d TQFT partition function as a special case), non-commutative Frobenius algebras, loop spaces of Frobenius algebras and a Z2\mathbb{Z}_{2}-invariant version of the latter. This Z2\mathbb{Z}_{2}-invariant version in the case of a semi-simple Frobenius algebra corresponds to the topological recursion of math-ph/0702045.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.03307,
  title  = {The ABCD of topological recursion},
  author = {Jorgen Ellegaard Andersen and Gaëtan Borot and Leonid O. Chekhov and Nicolas Orantin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.03307},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

75 pages, 6 figures ; v2: sl_2 statement corrected, results added on quantum Airy structure for semi-simple Lie algebras. v3: misprints correction. v4: re-sectioning, a bit more on semi-simple Lie algebras. v5: typos correcting, proof of Lemma 6.7 fixed

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:41:09.327Z