English

Topological defects as lagrangian correspondences

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-03-21 v3 Mathematical Physics math.MP Symplectic Geometry

Abstract

Topological defects attract much recent interest in high-energy and condensed matter physics because they encode (non-invertible) symmetries and dualities. We study codimension-1 topological defects from a hamiltonian point of view, with the defect location playing the role of `time'. We show that the Weinstein symplectic category governs topological defects and their fusion: each defect is a lagrangian correspondence, and defect fusion is their geometric composition. We illustrate the utility of these ideas by constructing S- and T-duality defects in string theory, including a novel topology-changing non-abelian T-duality defect.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2301.04143,
  title  = {Topological defects as lagrangian correspondences},
  author = {Alex S. Arvanitakis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.04143},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

5+1 pages v2: fixed Acknowledgments, v3: fixed a typo; essentially matches published version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:08:48.100Z