Boundary WZW, \(G/H\), \(G/G\) and CS theories (Q1854625)

Among the various types of conformal quantum field theories, the two-dimensional boundary conformal field theories have become a subject of particularly intense study during the last 15 years, mainly in view of their applications to boundary phenomena in \((1+1)\)- or two-dimensional critical systems and to the theory of branes in string theory. In general, the structure of boundary theories is much richer than the structure of bulk theories, and their classification program requires new concepts as well as highly advanced methods from modern geometry. The purpose of the paper under review is to extend the analysis of the canonical quantization of the boundary Wess-Zumino-Witten models (WZW) to the bulk and boundary coset-\(G/H\) models of conformal field theory obtained by gauging in the group-\(G\) WZW model the adjoint action of a subgroup \(H\) of \(G\). The author shows, by means of a fine analysis, that the phase spaces of his coset theories in the closed and in the open geometry coincide with these of some double Chern-Simons theory on two different three-manifolds. In particular, this leads to an explicit description of the canonical structure of the boundary \(G/G\) coset theory, whose quantization provides a new example of a two-dimensional topological boundary field theory.