English

Topological Chern-Simons/Matter Theories

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-08-29 v2 Algebraic Geometry Differential Geometry Symplectic Geometry

Abstract

We propose a new partially topological theory in three dimensions which couples Chern-Simons theory to matter. The 3-manifolds needed for this construction admit transverse holomorphic foliation (THF). The theory depends only on the choice of such a structure, but not on a choice of metric and in this sense, it is topological. We argue that this theory arises in topological A-model string theory on Lagrangian 3-branes in the presence of additional parallel coisotropic 5-branes. The theory obtained in this way is equivalent to an N=2 supersymmetric Chern-Simons matter theory on the same 3-manifold, which also only depends on the THF structure. The theory is a realization of a topological theory of class H, which allows splitting of a temporal direction from spatial directions. We briefly discuss potential condensed matter applications.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.09977,
  title  = {Topological Chern-Simons/Matter Theories},
  author = {Mina Aganagic and Kevin Costello and Jacob McNamara and Cumrun Vafa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.09977},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

50 pages, 1 figure. v2: references added

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:33:59.332Z