A fully local extension of Chern-Simons theory
CMSA EVENTS: CMSA Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar
When: November 4, 2025
4:15 pm - 6:15 pm
Where: Science Center 507
Address:
1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
Speaker: Dan Freed (Harvard)
The Reshetikhin-Turaev-Witten invariants of 3-manifolds fit into a 3-dimensional topological field theory that also attaches invariants to 2-manifolds and 1-manifolds. It has long been asked to extend to invariants of 0-manifolds as well, a question that often takes the form: What does Chern-Simons theory attach to a point?. In joint work with Claudia Scheimbauer and Constantin Teleman we use the cobordism hypothesis to construct a fully local version of Chern-Simons theory. We also consider different versions with different tangential structures, as I will explain.
For more details, visit https://people.math.harvard.edu/~vkrylov/seminar1.html
