A construction of observables for AKSZ sigma models (Q902083)

This paper constructs gauge invariant observables for the AKSZ sigma model in the BV formalism, which is a powerful topological theory containing topological Yang-Mills theory, Chern-Simons theory and BF theory as special cases (amongst others). The idea of the construction is to take a ``pre-observable'' on a larger space with auxiliary fields and push it forward via fibre integration to an observable on the AKSZ theory. The author clearly describes all the constructions necessary to understand AKSZ theory and introduces the notion of the pre-observable. This is also described in explicit examples; for instance, he recovers the well-known Wilson loop observable in Chern-Simons theory.