Ferretti-Rajeev term and homotopy theory (Q1328200)

The first part of the paper is dedicated to a review of basic notions concerning principal bundles over Grassmann manifolds, that will be later employed for the main purpose of the paper. For the \(n \times j\)-matrices over the complex vector space \(\mathbb{C}\), \(M(n,j, {\mathbb{C}})\) two kinds of manifolds are defined \[ V_{j,n} = \{Z \in M(n,j; {\mathbb{C}}) \mid Z^ + Z = 1\} \] \[ G_{j,n} = \{P \in M(n,j; {\mathbb{C}})\mid P^ 2 = P,\;P^ + = P,\;\text{tr }P = j\}. \] Considering the dynamical variable \(P : S^ 3 \to G_{j,n}\) and its lifting \(\widetilde{P} :B^ 4 \to G_{j,n}\) (\(B^ 4\) is a 4-dimensional ball whose boundary is \(S^ 3\)), Ferretti- Rajeev (F-R) models [Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 2033-2036 (1992)] are given by the usual kinetic term \(L_ 0 = {1\over 4f^ 2} \int_{S^ 3} d^ 3 x \text{tr }\partial_ \mu P \partial^ \mu P\) and an additional term \(L_{\text{F-R}} = {-1 \over 4 \pi^ 2} \int_{B^ 4} \text{tr} (\widetilde{P} d \widetilde {P} d \widetilde {P})^ 2\), multiplied by \(\theta\). The author makes the remark that the above form of F-R models is unbalanced because it contains \(P\) and its lifting \(\tilde P\). Factorizing \(\widetilde {P} = Z \widetilde {Z}\), the F-R models reduce to a kinetic term \(+\) \(\theta\) Chern-Simmons term. Unnecessary degrees of freedom are introduced and the method employed in order to remove them is not very clear. Under a transformation, \(Z \to Zg\), \(g : {\mathbb{R}} \times S^ 2 \to U(j)\), two important cases are quoted: (a) \(j = 1\) (\(U(1)\)- case), \(n \geq 3\) and \(\theta\) is not quantized; (b) \(n - 2 \geq j \geq 2\) (\(U(j)\)-case) and \(\theta = {\pi \over 4} n\), \(n \in Z\), namely \(\theta\) is quantized. The author concludes by claiming a consistent correspondence between the quantization of \(\theta\) and the homotopy theory. As a project for the future the author quotes few points that deserve to be investigated. One of them concerns the geometric quantization of the model. The English employed throughout the paper is susceptible to be improved.