Special quantum field theories in eight and other dimensions (Q1270335)

Using self-duality, some new Yang-Mills quantum field theories in dimensions greater than 4 are formulated. They are called nearly topological quantum field theories in the sense that they depend on some geometrical structure of the manifold (reduction of the holonomy group), or BRST QFT's, because they are constructed by starting with a topological action and exploiting the BRST formalism with covariant gauge functions. The standard 4D self-duality equations are generalized to any dimension in the form \(\lambda F^{\mu \nu}=1/2T^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma}F_{\rho \sigma}\), where \(F^{\mu \nu}\) is a field strength, \(\lambda \) is a constant eigenvalue and \(T^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma}\) is a totally antisymmetric tensor which is invariant not under \(SO( D) \), but under its subgroup. In pure 8D Yang-Mills, two cases are considered and compared: \(SU( 4) \) (Calabi-Yau 4-fold) and \(\text{Spin}(7)\) (Joyce manifold). For each case, corresponding actions and observables are obtained, elliptic complexes are constructed and geometric interpretation in terms of cycles and indexes is given. Then a 3-form gauge field \(B_{3}\) is introduced, its mathematical interpretation is given and its coupling with pure Yang-Mills in 8D is described. The final action (without SUSY terms) is of the type \( S=\int (\partial _{\mu}B_{\nu \rho \sigma}\partial ^{\mu}B^{\nu \rho \sigma}+\text{tr }F^{\mu \nu}F_{\mu \nu}+\partial _{\mu}B_{\nu \rho \sigma}\text{tr }F^{\mu \nu}F^{\rho \sigma}) \). Dimensional reductions to 6D (important in superstring theory) and 4D (in connection with the non-Abelian Seiberg-Witten equations) are discussed. Other possibilities as 12D BRST QFT (connected with \(F\)-theory) and 10D BRST QFT are outlined briefly.