Doctoral thesis
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Topological conformal field theories from gauge-fixed topological gauge theories: a case study

Defense date2020-05-14
Abstract

This thesis is devoted to the study of a new construction of two-dimensional topological conformal field theories by gauge fixing two-dimensional topological gauge theories. We study in detail the Lorenz-gauged abelian and non-abelian BF theory, which are topological conformal classically and on the quantum level. We find that the abelian model corresponds to Witten's B-model with a parity shifted flat target space. It is therefore obtained by twisting a N = (2,2) supersymmetric model, while no such twist exists in the non-abelian case. Furthermore, we study an analogue of Gromov-Witten periods in the abelian model. Finally, we show that the non-abelian model allows non-trivial Jordan blocks of the Hamiltonian and thus defines a logarithmic conformal field theory. The existence of infinite-dimensional Jordan blocks allows an explicit construction of primary fields, whose conformal weights are subject to quantum corrections.

Keywords
  • Conformal field theory
  • Gauge theory
  • Topological conformal field theory
  • BF theory
Citation (ISO format)
YOUMANS, Donald Ray. Topological conformal field theories from gauge-fixed topological gauge theories: a case study. Doctoral Thesis, 2020. doi: 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:139003
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Creation27/07/2020 23:06:00
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