Locality and Integration in Topological Field Theory

Abstract

This paper is an expanded version of a talk given at the XIX International Colloquium on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics, Salamanca, July, 1992. We discuss the geometry of topological terms in classical actions, which by themselves form the actions of topological field theories. We first treat the Chern-Simons action directly. Then we explain how the geometry is best understood via integration of smooth Deligne cocycles. We conclude with some remarks about the corresponding quantum theories in 3 and 4 dimensions. This paper is written using AMSTeX 2.1, which can be obtained via ftp from the American Mathematical Society (instructions included).

15 pages

References in corpus (1)

• Chern-Simons Theory with Finite Gauge Group

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Noncommutative Geometry and Matrix Theory: Compactification on Tori
• Chern-Simons Theory with Finite Gauge Group
• On unitary 2-representations of finite groups and topological quantum field theory
• Deligne-Beilinson cohomology and abelian links invariants
• Relative Topological Integrals and Relative Cheeger-Simons Differential Characters
• Gerbes in classical Chern-Simons theory
• K-Theory, D-Branes and Ramond-Ramond Fields