The coupling of Poisson sigma models to topological backgrounds

Abstract

We extend the coupling to the topological backgrounds, recently worked out for the 2-dimensional BF-model, to the most general Poisson sigma models. The coupling involves the choice of a Casimir function on the target manifold and modifies the BRST transformations. This in turn induces a change in the BRST cohomology of the resulting theory. The observables of the coupled theory are analyzed and their geometrical interpretation is given. We finally couple the theory to 2-dimensional topological gravity: this is the first step to study a topological string theory in propagation on a Poisson manifold. As an application, we show that the gauge-fixed vectorial supersymmetry of the Poisson sigma models has a natural explanation in terms of the theory coupled to topological gravity.

31 pages; v2: typos fixed, references added, version to appear in JHEP

References in corpus (5)

• Comments on N=(2,2) Supersymmetry on Two-Manifolds
• Poisson sigma model on the sphere
• The Coupling of Chern-Simons Theory to Topological Gravity
• Comparing Poisson Sigma Model with A-model
• B-strings on non-Kählerian manifolds