The role of p_1-structures in 3-dimensional Chern-Simons theories
arXiv:2603.11291 · doi:10.4310/SDG.260604000503
Abstract
Our recent paper~\cite{FST} with Claudia Scheimbauer uses the cobordism hypothesis to construct fully local Chern-Simons theories. Here we expose some physics motivations: Yang-Mills plus Chern-Simons in the bosonic case and the free Majorana-Weyl spinor field in the fermionic case. We also give expositions of tangential structures and invertible field theories, in particular the 'gravitational Chern-Simons theory' used by Witten to obtain topological field theories from the physical theories.
26 pages, dedicated to S.-T. Yau; minor revisions plus added reference in v2