802 publications from this institution
The purpose of this article is to describe some themes in theoretical physics that developed independently for many years, in some cases for decades, and then converged rather suddenly beginning around 1994–95. The convergence produced an upheaval sometimes called “the second superstring revolution.” It is as significant in its own way as “the first superstring revolution,” the period around 1984–85 when the potential of string theory to give a unified description of natural law was first widely appreciated.
We reconsider Chern-Simons gauge theory on a Seifert manifold M (the total space of a nontrivial circle bundle over a Riemann surface). When M is a Seifert manifold, Lawrence and Rozansky have shown from the exact solution of Chern-Simons theory that the partition function has a remarkably simple structure and can be rewritten entirely as a sum of local contributions from the flat connections on M. We explain how this empirical fact follows from the technique of non-abelian localization as applied to the Chern-Simons path integral. In the process, we show that the partition function of Chern-Simons theory on M admits a topological interpretation in terms of the equivariant cohomology of the moduli space of flat connections on M.
Some remarks are made about the nature and role of the search for higher symmetry in string theory. These symmetries are most likely to be uncovered in a mysterious ‘unbroken phase’, for which (2+ 1)-dimensional gravity provides an interesting and soluble model. New insights about conformal field theory, in which one gets ‘out of flatland’ to see a wider symmetry from a higher-dimensional vantage point, may offer clues to the unbroken phase of string theory
We discuss some general properties of quantum gravity in De Sitter space. It has been argued that the Hilbert space is of finite dimension. This suggests a macroscopic argument that General Relativity cannot be quantized -- unless it is embedded in a more precise theory that determines the value of the cosmological constant. We give a definition of the quantum Hilbert space using the asymptotic behavior in the past and future, without requiring detailed microscopic knowledge. We discuss the difficulties in defining any precisely calculable or measurable observables in an asymptotically de Sitter spacetime, and explore some meta-observables that appear to make mathematical sense but cannot be measured by an observer who lives in the spacetime. This article is an expanded version of a lecture at Strings 2001 in Mumbai.
We study a 3-dimensional topological sigma-model, whose target space is a hyper-Kähler manifold X. A Feynman diagram calculation of its partition func
We investigate the statistical mechanics of a gas of fractional statistics particles in 2 + 1 dimensions. In the case of statistics very close to Fermi statistics (statistical parameter θ = π(1 − 1/n), for large n), the effect of the statistics is a weak attraction. Building upon earlier RPA calculation of Fetter, Hanna, and Laughlin for the case n = 2, we argue that for large n perturbation theory is reliable and exhibits superfluidity (or superconductivity after coupling to electromagnetism). We attempt to describe the order parameter of this superconducting phase in terms of "spontaneous breaking of commutativity of translations" as opposed to the usual pairing order parameters. The vortices of the superconducting anyon gas are charged, and superconducting order parameters of the usual type vanish. We investigate the characteristic P and T violating phenomenology.
It is shown that 2+1 dimensional quantum Yang-Mills theory, with an action consisting purely of the Chern-Simons term, is exactly soluble and gives a natur
A bstract It has been proposed that a certain ℤ N orbifold, analytically continued in N , can be used to describe the thermodynamics of Rindler space in string theory. In this paper, we attempt to implement this idea for the open-string sector. The most interesting result is that, although the orbifold is tachyonic for positive integer N , the tachyon seems to disappear after analytic continuation to the region that is appropriate for computing Tr $$ {\rho}^{\mathcal{N}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>ρ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:msup> </mml:math> , where ρ is the density matrix of Rindler space and Re $$ \mathcal{N} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:math> > 1. Analytic continuation of the full orbifold conformal field theory remains a challenge, but we find some evidence that if such analytic continuation is possible, the resulting theory is a logarithmic conformal field theory, necessarily nonunitary.
This paper is devoted in part to clarifying some aspects of the relation between quantum field theory and infinite Grassmannians, and in part to pointing o
We study a 3-dimensional topological sigma-model, whose target space is a hyper-Kahler manifold X. A Feynman diagram calculation of its partition function demonstrates that it is a finite type invariant of 3-manifolds which is similar in structure to those appearing in the perturbative calculation of the Chern-Simons partition function. The sigma-model suggests a new system of weights for finite type invariants of 3-manifolds, described by trivalent graphs. The Riemann curvature of X plays the role of Lie algebra structure constants in Chern-Simons theory, and the Bianchi identity plays the role of the Jacobi identity in guaranteeing the so-called IHX relation among the weights. We argue that, for special choices of X, the partition function of the sigma-model yields the Casson-Walker invariant and its generalizations. We also derive Walker's surgery formula from the SL(2,Z) action on the finite-dimensional Hilbert space obtained by quantizing the sigma-model on a two-dimensional torus.
MOST expositions of string theory focus on its possible use as a framework for unifying the forces of nature. But I will take a different tack in this article. Rather than the unification of the forces, I will here describe what one might call the unification of the ideas.
We define the (1 + 1)-dimensional supersymmetry algebra of type (p, q) to be that generated by p right-handed Majorana-Weyl supercharges and q left-handed ones. We construct the non-linear sigma models with supersymmetry of type (1,0) and (2,0) and discuss their geometry and their relevance to compactifications of the heterotic superstring. The sigma-model anomalies can be cancelled by a mechanism closely related to that used by Green and Schwarz to cancel gravitational and Yang-Mills anomalies for the superstring.
In most field theories that enter physics, the energy is defined as the integral of a gauge invariant physically meaningful energy density T00(x):
ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVArticleNEXTUnusually strong antiferromagnetic coupling in unsymmetrical diiron(III).mu.-oxo complexesPedro Gomez-Romero, E. H. Witten, William Michael Reiff, and Geoffrey B. JamesonCite this: Inorg. Chem. 1990, 29, 26, 5211–5217Publication Date (Print):December 1, 1990Publication History Published online1 May 2002Published inissue 1 December 1990https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ic00351a015https://doi.org/10.1021/ic00351a015research-articleACS PublicationsRequest reuse permissionsArticle Views204Altmetric-Citations23LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail Other access optionsGet e-AlertscloseSupporting Info (1)»Supporting Information Supporting Information Get e-Alerts
In the first of these two lectures, I use a comparison to symplectic Khovanov homology to motivate the idea that the Jones polynomial and Khovanov homology of knots can be defined by counting the solutions of certain elliptic partial differential equations in 4 or 5 dimensions. The second lecture is devoted to a description of the rather unusual boundary conditions by which these equations should be supplemented. An appendix describes some physical background. (Versions of these lectures have been presented at various institutions including the Simons Center at Stonybrook, the TSIMF conference center in Sanya, and also Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.)
In the twenty-five years since the original publication of these two Volumes, there have been numerous developments in string theory. The curious twists and turns that marked its pre-1987 evolution have continued apace, and current research makes contact with a wide range of areas of mathematics and physics. In the following we will mention briefly some of these developments and then explain why we believe that these volumes are still useful.
