Chern-Simons Gauge Theory: 20 Years After

Chern-Simons Gauge Theory: 20 Years After PDF Author: Jørgen E. Andersen
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821853538
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
In 1989, Edward Witten discovered a deep relationship between quantum field theory and knot theory, and this beautiful discovery created a new field of research called Chern-Simons theory. This field has the remarkable feature of intertwining a large number of diverse branches of research in mathematics and physics, among them low-dimensional topology, differential geometry, quantum algebra, functional and stochastic analysis, quantum gravity, and string theory. The 20-year anniversary of Witten's discovery provided an opportunity to bring together researchers working in Chern-Simons theory for a meeting, and the resulting conference, which took place during the summer of 2009 at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, included many of the leading experts in the field. This volume documents the activities of the conference and presents several original research articles, including another monumental paper by Witten that is sure to stimulate further activity in this and related fields. This collection will provide an excellent overview of the current research directions and recent progress in Chern-Simons gauge theory.

Chern-Simons Gauge Theory: 20 Years After

Chern-Simons Gauge Theory: 20 Years After PDF Author: Jørgen E. Andersen
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821853538
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book

Book Description
In 1989, Edward Witten discovered a deep relationship between quantum field theory and knot theory, and this beautiful discovery created a new field of research called Chern-Simons theory. This field has the remarkable feature of intertwining a large number of diverse branches of research in mathematics and physics, among them low-dimensional topology, differential geometry, quantum algebra, functional and stochastic analysis, quantum gravity, and string theory. The 20-year anniversary of Witten's discovery provided an opportunity to bring together researchers working in Chern-Simons theory for a meeting, and the resulting conference, which took place during the summer of 2009 at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, included many of the leading experts in the field. This volume documents the activities of the conference and presents several original research articles, including another monumental paper by Witten that is sure to stimulate further activity in this and related fields. This collection will provide an excellent overview of the current research directions and recent progress in Chern-Simons gauge theory.

The Floer Memorial Volume

The Floer Memorial Volume PDF Author: Helmut Hofer
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3034892179
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
Andreas Floer died on May 15, 1991 an untimely and tragic death. His visions and far-reaching contributions have significantly influenced the developments of mathematics. His main interests centered on the fields of dynamical systems, symplectic geometry, Yang-Mills theory and low dimensional topology. Motivated by the global existence problem of periodic solutions for Hamiltonian systems and starting from ideas of Conley, Gromov and Witten, he developed his Floer homology, providing new, powerful methods which can be applied to problems inaccessible only a few years ago. This volume opens with a short biography and three hitherto unpublished papers of Andreas Floer. It then presents a collection of invited contributions, and survey articles as well as research papers on his fields of interest, bearing testimony of the high esteem and appreciation this brilliant mathematician enjoyed among his colleagues. Authors include: A. Floer, V.I. Arnold, M. Atiyah, M. Audin, D.M. Austin, S.M. Bates, P.J. Braam, M. Chaperon, R.L. Cohen, G. Dell' Antonio, S.K. Donaldson, B. D'Onofrio, I. Ekeland, Y. Eliashberg, K.D. Ernst, R. Finthushel, A.B. Givental, H. Hofer, J.D.S. Jones, I. McAllister, D. McDuff, Y.-G. Oh, L. Polterovich, D.A. Salamon, G.B. Segal, R. Stern, C.H. Taubes, C. Viterbo, A. Weinstein, E. Witten, E. Zehnder.

Lecture Notes on Chern-Simons-Witten Theory

Lecture Notes on Chern-Simons-Witten Theory PDF Author: Sen Hu
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9810239092
Category : Gauge fields (Physics).
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
This monograph is based on lectures on topological quantum field theory given in 1989 at Princeton University by E. Witten, in which he unified several important mathematical works in terms of the Donaldson polynomial, Gromov/Floer homology, and Jones polynomials. Witten explained his three-dimensional construction of Jones polynomials, "an elegant construction of a new polynomial invariant in three-dimensional space" (per the author), via quantization of Chern-Simons gauge theory. Hu (Princeton U.) adds missing details and some new developments in the field. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

Chern-Simons Theory, Matrix Models, and Topological Strings

Chern-Simons Theory, Matrix Models, and Topological Strings PDF Author: Marcos Marino
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198568490
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
After an introduction to matrix models and Cherns-Simons gauge theory, this book describes in detail the topological string theories that correspond to these gauge theories and develops the mathematical implication of this duality for the enumerative geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds and knot theory.

Chern–Simons (Super)Gravity

Chern–Simons (Super)Gravity PDF Author: Mokhtar Hassaine
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814730955
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
This book grew out of a set of lecture notes on gravitational Chern–Simons (CS) theories developed over the past decade for several schools and different audiences including graduate students and researchers. CS theories are gauge-invariant theories that can include gravity consistently. They are only defined in odd dimensions and represent a very special class of theories in the Lovelock family. Lovelock gravitation theories are the natural extensions of General Relativity for dimensions greater than four that yield second-order field equations for the metric. These theories also admit local supersymmetric extensions where supersymmetry is an off-shell symmetry of the action, as in a standard gauge theory. Apart from the arguments of mathematical elegance and beauty, the gravitational CS actions are exceptionally endowed with physical attributes that suggest the viability of a quantum interpretation. CS theories are gauge-invariant, scale-invariant and background independent; they have no dimensional coupling constants. All constants in the Lagrangian are fixed rational coefficients that cannot be adjusted without destroying gauge invariance. This exceptional status of CS systems makes them classically interesting to study, and quantum mechanically intriguing and promising. Contents:The Quantum Gravity PuzzleGeometry: General OverviewFirst Order Gravitation TheoryGravity in Higher DimensionsChern–Simons GravitiesAdditional Features of Chern–Simons GravityBlack Holes, Particles and BranesSupersymmetry and SupergravityChern–Simons SupergravitiesInönü–Wigner Contractions and Its ExtensionsUnconventional SupersymmetriesConcluding Remarks Readership: This book provides an introduction to Chern–Simons (super) gravity theories accessible for physics as well as mathematics graduate students and researchers. Key Features:The topics described in this book are self-contained and just require some basic background in physics and mathematics. Chern–Simons supergravity is a field which is intensively studied in the current literature of physics and mathematics, with more than 2000 articles related to this topic in the arXiv databaseThis title covers a topic not usually discussed either in standard gravity courses or in mathematical presentations of characteristic classes or cohomologyKeywords:Supergravity;Supersymmetry;Gauge Theory

Lectures on Tensor Categories and Modular Functors

Lectures on Tensor Categories and Modular Functors PDF Author: Bojko Bakalov
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821826867
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book gives an exposition of the relations among the following three topics: monoidal tensor categories (such as a category of representations of a quantum group), 3-dimensional topological quantum field theory, and 2-dimensional modular functors (which naturally arise in 2-dimensional conformal field theory). The following examples are discussed in detail: the category of representations of a quantum group at a root of unity and the Wess-Zumino-Witten modular functor. The idea that these topics are related first appeared in the physics literature in the study of quantum field theory. Pioneering works of Witten and Moore-Seiberg triggered an avalanche of papers, both physical and mathematical, exploring various aspects of these relations. Upon preparing to lecture on the topic at MIT, however, the authors discovered that the existing literature was difficult and that there were gaps to fill. The text is wholly expository and finely succinct. It gathers results, fills existing gaps, and simplifies some proofs. The book makes an important addition to the existing literature on the topic. It would be suitable as a course text at the advanced-graduate level.

Chern-Simons Gauge Theory

Chern-Simons Gauge Theory PDF Author: Jørgen E. Andersen
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821888536
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
In 1989, Edward Witten discovered a deep relationship between quantum field theory and knot theory, and this discovery created a new field of research called Chern-Simons theory. This volume documents the activities of a conference which took place in 2009 and focused on Chern-Simons theory.

The Quantum Theory of Fields

The Quantum Theory of Fields PDF Author: Steven Weinberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521550017
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
Available for the first time in paperback, The Quantum Theory of Fields is a self-contained, comprehensive, and up-to-date introduction to quantum field theory from Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg. Volume I introduces the foundations of quantum field theory.

Selfdual Gauge Field Vortices

Selfdual Gauge Field Vortices PDF Author: Gabriella Tarantello
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0817646086
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This monograph discusses specific examples of selfdual gauge field structures, including the Chern–Simons model, the abelian–Higgs model, and Yang–Mills gauge field theory. The author builds a foundation for gauge theory and selfdual vortices by introducing the basic mathematical language of gauge theory and formulating examples of Chern–Simons–Higgs theories (in both abelian and non-abelian settings). Thereafter, the Electroweak theory and self-gravitating Electroweak strings are examined. The final chapters treat elliptic problems involving Chern–Simmons models, concentration-compactness principles, and Maxwell–Chern–Simons vortices.

Homotopy Quantum Field Theory

Homotopy Quantum Field Theory PDF Author: Vladimir G. Turaev
Publisher: European Mathematical Society
ISBN: 9783037190869
Category : EMS tracts in mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Homotopy Quantum Field Theory (HQFT) is a branch of Topological Quantum Field Theory founded by E. Witten and M. Atiyah. It applies ideas from theoretical physics to study principal bundles over manifolds and, more generally, homotopy classes of maps from manifolds to a fixed target space. This book is the first systematic exposition of Homotopy Quantum Field Theory. It starts with a formal definition of an HQFT and provides examples of HQFTs in all dimensions. The main body of the text is focused on $2$-dimensional and $3$-dimensional HQFTs. A study of these HQFTs leads to new algebraic objects: crossed Frobenius group-algebras, crossed ribbon group-categories, and Hopf group-coalgebras. These notions and their connections with HQFTs are discussed in detail. The text ends with several appendices including an outline of recent developments and a list of open problems. Three appendices by M. Muger and A. Virelizier summarize their work in this area. The book is addressed to mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and graduate students interested in topological aspects of quantum field theory. The exposition is self-contained and well suited for a one-semester graduate course. Prerequisites include only basics of algebra and topology.