Secondary products in supersymmetric field theory (Q2308088)

This article discusses important structures that appear in topological quantum field theory (TQFT). The class of TQFTs under discussion is of cohomological type, realized as twists of a supersymmetric field theory, and the structures of interest are higher products of local and extended operators of TQFT. One main goal of the paper is to explain a concrete way to construct shifted Poisson structure of operators using the idea of topological descent starting from the input data of Lagrangian field theory. In addition to explaining the important structure that is present in any cohomological TQFT, this paper provides a nice overview for the emerging perspective on TQFT and higher structures therein. For instance, the discussion on deformation quantization in terms of the \(\Omega\)-background is presented as a nice application of the main thread of the paper. Also, a general discussion of extended operators of TQFT, if well-known to experts, marks a great addition to the literature. All this is explained in detail for crucial examples. That is, for the 2d B-model, they recover a version of the Schouten-Nijenhuis bracket; for Rozansky-Witten theory, they obtain Poisson bracket of the target holomorphic symplectic manifold; for topological twists of 4d \(\mathcal{N}=4\) super Yang-Mills theory, they argue to observe the nontrivial 3-disk algebra structure on the category of line operators. The writing style throughout is not completely rigorous, but the presentation still retains mathematical flavor. For mathematicians, this article will provide a case study of important examples of TQFT which will nicely complement the axiomatic approach and help learning physicists' way of thinking in a clear manner. For physicists, this article will supply a concrete realization of the abstract structures mathematicians like to talk about in the context of TQFT. The paper is pedagogically written so it will likely be useful for large readership both in mathematics and physics.