Embedded graph invariants in Chern-Simons theory

We show that the four-dimensional U(1) gauge theory in the continuum formulation has a confining phase (exhibiting area law of the Wilson loop) in the strong coupling region above a critical coupling $g_c$. This result is obtained by taking into account topological non-trivial sectors in U(1) gauge theory. The derivation is based on the reformulation of gauge theory as a deformation of a topological quantum field theory and subsequent dimensional reduction of the D-dimensional topological quantum field theory to the (D-2)-dimensional nonlinear sigma model. The topological quantum field theory part of the four-dimensional U(1) gauge theory is exactly equivalent to the two-dimensional O(2) nonlinear sigma model. The confining (resp. Coulomb) phase of U(1) gauge theory corresponds to the high (resp. low) temperature phase of O(2) nonlinear sigma model and the critical point $g_c$ is determined by the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition temperature. The quark (charge) confinement in the strong coupling phase is caused by the vortex condensation. Thus the continuum gauge theory has the direct correspondence to the compact formulation of lattice gauge theory.

It is a long-standing question to extend the definition of 3-dimensional Chern-Simons theory to one which associates values to 1-manifolds with boundary and to 0-manifolds. We provide a solution in case the gauge group is a torus. We also develop from different points of view an associated 4-dimensional invertible topological field theory which encodes the anomaly of Chern-Simons. Finite gauge groups are also revisited, and we describe a theory of path integrals as a general construction for a certain class of finite topological field theories. Topological pure gauge theories in lower dimension are presented as a warm-up.

We show that the fundamental time-reversal invariant (TRI) insulator exists in $4+1$ dimensions, where the effective-field theory is described by the $(4+1)$-dimensional Chern-Simons theory and the topological properties of the electronic structure are classified by the second Chern number. These topological properties are the natural generalizations of the time reversal-breaking quantum Hall insulator in $2+1$ dimensions. The TRI quantum spin Hall insulator in $2+1$ dimensions and the topological insulator in $3+1$ dimensions can be obtained as descendants from the fundamental TRI insulator in $4+1$ dimensions through a dimensional reduction procedure. The effective topological field theory and the ${Z}_{2}$ topological classification for the TRI insulators in $2+1$ and $3+1$ dimensions are naturally obtained from this procedure. All physically measurable topological response functions of the TRI insulators are completely described by the effective topological field theory. Our effective topological field theory predicts a number of measurable phenomena, the most striking of which is the topological magnetoelectric effect, where an electric field generates a topological contribution to the magnetization in the same direction, with a universal constant of proportionality quantized in odd multiples of the fine-structure constant $\ensuremath{\alpha}={e}^{2}∕\ensuremath{\hbar}c$. Finally, we present a general classification of all topological insulators in various dimensions and describe them in terms of a unified topological Chern-Simons field theory in phase space.

In a recent article Turaev and Viro [TV] have constructed nontrivial “quantum” invariants of closed compact 3-manifolds M 3 in the form of state sums (called partition functions in statistical physics and vacuum functionals in quantum field theory) associated with the quantized universal enveloping algebra Uq(sl(2, C)) when q is a complex root of unity of a certain degree 2r > 4. The state sum is first defined for a given triangulation X of M and then shown to be independent of the triangulation X of M thus giving rise to a well defined invariant of M, which thus depends on q. This result may be viewed as a rigorous mathematical construction of what is called a topological quantum field theory. In fact, in the language of physicists, a triangulation corresponds to the introduction of a high-energy cut-off. Now topological quantum field theories have trivial dynamics, in other words they only deal with the vacuum sector, are scale invariant and more generally independent of any metrics. Invariance under subdivision is just the statement that the associated renormalization group transformation is trivial. This result suggests that the familiar techniques from algebraic topology should become useful to construct and discuss other topological quantum field theories. Moreover, similar combinatorial techniques could become helpful in discussing particle structures of low dimensional quantum field theories, whose vacuum sector is given in terms of a topological quantum field theory.

Topological quantum field theory (TQFT) is a powerful tool to describe homologies, which normally involve complexes and a variety of maps/morphisms, what makes a functional integration approach with a sum over a single kind of map seemingly problematic. In TQFT this problem is overcome by exploiting the rich set of zero modes of BRST operators, which appear sufficient to describe complexes. We explain what this approach looks like for the important class of Khovanov-Rozansky (KR) cohomologies, which categorify the observables (Wilson lines or knot polynomials) in 3D Chern-Simons theory. We develop a construction of odd differential operators, associated with all link diagrams, including tangles with open ends. These operators become nilpotent only for a diagram with no external legs, but even for open tangles one can develop a factorization formalism, which preserves Reidemeister/topological invariance—the symmetry of the problem. This technique seems much more “physical” than the conventional language of homological algebra and should have many applications to various problems beyond Chern-Simons theory. We also hope that this language will provide efficient algorithms, and finally allow one to computerize the calculation of KR cohomologies—for closed diagrams and for open tangles.

Topological quantum field theories provide some of the most interesting examples for the usefulness of path integrals. One of the best known of these examples was discovered in [32] where one particular topological quantum field theory, Chern-Simons theory, was studied and the so-called “Wilson loop observables” (WLOs) were computed explicitly. These WLOs are heuristic path integrals and the interesting thing about the expressions obtained in [32] is that they involve highly non-trivial link invariants like the Jones polynomial, the HOMFLY polynomial, and the Kauffman polynomial, cf. [26, 161. A more thorough study of the WLOs by other methods [18, 8, 5, 171 later led to a breakthrough in knot theory, the discovery of the universal Vassiliev invariant [27]. Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to establish the aforementioned connection between path integrals and knot polynomials at a rigorous level. In the special case, however, where the base manifold M of the Chern-Simons model considered is of product form the situation looks much more promising and as we will show in the present paper it is reasonable to expect that, at least for some of these special manifolds M, it will eventually be possible

We show that recently proposed generalized Chern-Simons action can be identified with the field theory action of a topological point particle. We find the crucial correspondence which makes it possible to derive the field theory actions from a special version of the generalized Chern-Simons actions. We provide arguments that the general coordinate invariance in the target space and the flat connection condition as a topological field theory can be accommodated in a very natural way. We propose series of new gauge invariant observables.

In this book we shall review the systematic approaches and applications of a theory which investigates situations where Feynman path integrals of physical systems can be evaluated exactly leading to a complete understanding of the quantum physics. These mathematical formalisms are in large part motivated by the symmetries present in integrable systems and topological quantum field theories which make these latter examples exactly solvable problems. Besides providing conceptual understandings of the solvability features of these special classes of problems, this framework yields geometric approaches to evaluating the quantum spectrum of generic quantum mechanical and quantum field theoretical partition functions. The techniques that we shall present here in fact motivate an approach to studying generic physical problems by relating their properties to those of integrable and topological field theories. In doing so, we shall therefore also review some of the more modern quantum field theoretical and mathematical ideas which have been at the forefront of theoretical physics over the past two decades.KeywordsPartition FunctionPath IntegralEquivariant CohomologyCoadjoint OrbitSupersymmetric Quantum MechanicThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This graduate/research level text describes in a unified fashion the statistical mechanics of random walks, random surfaces and random higher dimensional manifolds with an emphasis on the geometrical aspects of the theory and applications to the quantisation of strings, gravity and topological field theory. With chapters on random walks, random surfaces, two- and higher dimensional quantum gravity, topological quantum field theories and Monte Carlo simulations of random geometries, the text provides a self-contained account of quantum geometry from a statistical field theory point of view. The approach uses discrete approximations and develops analytical and numerical tools. Continuum physics is recovered through scaling limits at phase transition points and the relation to conformal quantum field theories coupled to quantum gravity is described. The most important numerical work is covered, but the main aim is to develop mathematically precise results that have wide applications. Many diagrams and references are included.

Monopoles and topological field theory

The spin network simulator model represents a bridge between (generalized) circuit schemes for standard quantum computation and approaches based on notions from Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFT). More precisely, when working with purely discrete unitary gates, the simulator is naturally modelled as families of quantum automata which in turn represent discrete versions of topological quantum computation models. Such a quantum combinatorial scheme, which essentially encodes SU(2) Racah-Wigner algebra and its braided counterpart, is particularly suitable to address problems in topology and group theory and we discuss here a finite states-quantum automaton able to accept the language of braid group in view of applications to the problem of estimating link polynomials in Chern-Simons field theory.

Following my plenary lecture on ICMP2000 I review my results concerning two closely related topics: topological quantum field theories and the problem of quantization of gauge theories. I start with old results (first examples of topological quantum field theories were constructed in my papers in late seventies) and I come to some new results, that were not published yet.

Distinct quantum vacua of topologically ordered states can be tunneled into\neach other via extended operators. The possible applications include condensed\nmatter and quantum cosmology. We present a straightforward approach to\ncalculate the partition function on various manifolds and ground state\ndegeneracy (GSD), mainly based on continuum/cochain Topological Quantum Field\nTheories (TQFT), in any dimension. This information can be related to the\ncounting of extended operators of bosonic/fermionic TQFT. On the lattice scale,\nanyonic particles/strings live at the ends of line/surface operators. Certain\nsystems in different dimensions are related to each other through dimensional\nreduction schemes, analogous to (de)categorification. Examples include spin\nTQFTs derived from gauging the interacting fermionic symmetry protected\ntopological states (with fermion parity $\\mathbb{Z}_2^f$) of symmetry group\n$\\mathbb{Z}_4\\times \\mathbb{Z}_2$ and $(\\mathbb{Z}_4)^2$ in 3+1D, also\n$\\mathbb{Z}_2$ and $(\\mathbb{Z}_2)^2$ in 2+1D. Gauging the last three cases\nbegets non-Abelian spin TQFT/topological order. We consider situations where a\nTQFT lives on (1) a closed spacetime or (2) a spacetime with boundary, such\nthat the bulk and boundary are fully-gapped and short or long-range entangled\n(SRE/LRE). Anyonic excitations can be deconfined on the boundary. We introduce\nnew exotic topological interfaces on which neither particle nor string\nexcitations alone condensed, but only fuzzy-composite objects of extended\noperators can end (e.g. a string-like composite object formed by a set of\nparticles can end on a special 2+1D boundary of 3+1D bulk). We explore the\nrelations between group extension constructions and partially breaking\nconstructions (e.g. 0-form/higher-form/composite breaking) of topological\nboundaries, after gauging. We comment on the implications of entanglement\nentropy for some of such LRE systems.\n

Defects in [formula omitted] coset, [formula omitted] topological field theory and discrete Fourier–Mukai transform

In this short paper, we argue that the chiral central charge c− of a (2+1)d topological ordered state is sometimes strongly constrained by 't Hooft anomaly of antiunitary global symmetry. For example, if a (2+1)d fermionic topological quantum field theory (TQFT) has a time-reversal anomaly with T2=(−1)F labeled as ν∈Z16, the TQFT must have c−=1/4 mod 1/2 for odd ν, while c−=0 mod 1/2 for even ν. This generalizes the fact that the bosonic TQFT with T anomaly in a particular class must carry c−=4 mod 8 to fermionic cases. We also study such a constraint for fermionic TQFT with U(1)×CT symmetry, which is regarded as a gapped surface of the topological superconductor in class AIII.Received 5 January 2021Revised 16 March 2021Accepted 12 April 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.023107Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasSymmetry protected topological statesTopological field theoriesTopological superconductorsCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics