4D Chern-Simons theory and affine Gaudin models (Q829979)

In attempts to uncover the deeper structural affinities of various classical integrable theories, the Costello, Witten and Yamazaki derivations of integrable lattice models from gauge theory [\textit{E. Witten}, Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 21, No. 7, 1819--1843 (2018; Zbl 1457.82109); [\textit{K. Costello} et al., ICCM Not. 6, No. 1, 46--119 (2018; Zbl 1405.81043); ICCM Not. 6, No. 1, 120--146 (2018; Zbl 1405.81044)] play a distinguished role. The underlying gauge structure has been attributed to a four-dimensional variant of the Chern-Simons theory. The present author derived in [``On integrable field theories as dihedral affine Gaudin models'', 2020, No. 15, 4513--4601 (2020)] an alternative description that is based on Gaudin models, associated with untwisted affine Kac-Moody algebras. The main result of the present paper is that the classical integrable field theory on the reduced phase space of the four-dimensional Chern-Simons theory can indeed be described as a realization of an affine Gaudin model.