On the Rozansky-Witten weight systems (Q982421)

The paper under review is a much-anticipated elaboration of a paper of the first author [Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 71, 1--17 (2003; Zbl 1044.57004)], explaining a sense in which Rozansky--Witten (RW) weight systems, which come from complex symplectic manifolds, are analogous to Chern--Simons (CS) weight systems, which come from metric finite-dimensional Lie algebras. The results provide groundwork for a rigourous construction of a \((1+1+1)\)--dimensional RW TQFT. Potential applications to knot theory are discussed in \textit{J. Roberts} and \textit{J. Sawon} [Ohtsuki, T. (ed.) et al., Invariants of knots and 3-manifolds. Proceedings of the workshop, Kyoto, Japan, September 17-21, (2001). Coventry: Geometry and Topology Publications, Geom. Topol. Monogr. 4, 263--279 (2002; Zbl 1029.53056)]. A Vassiliev (finite type) invariant is a marriage of an algebraic object called a weight system with a combinatorial object called a Jacobi diagram. Metric finite-dimensional Lie algebras give rise to CS weight systems, and these are the only class of weight systems with which we know how to make explicit computations. Counterexamples of \textit{P. Vogel}, however, indicate that CS weight systems constitute a small and poor subclass of all possible weight systems [J. Pure Appl. Algebra 215, No. 6, 1292--1339 (2011; Zbl 1221.57015)]. The paper under review instead studies RW weight systems. Such a weight system arises from a complex symplectic manifold \(X\). The goal of the paper is to interpret these weight systems as also arising from Lie algebra objects, and to construct a Duflo isomorphism between `symmetric' and `universal enveloping' algebras of these, parallelling [\textit{D. Bar-Natan, T. T. Q. Le, Thang} and \textit{D. P. Thurston}, Geom. Topol. 7, 1--31 (2003; Zbl 1032.57008)]. The first part of the paper, Sections 2 to 5, constitutes a very good lightning introduction to CS and to RW weight systems, to derived categories of coherent sheaves, and to the Atiyah class. The exposition is a joy to read. The paper begins in earnest in Section 6, where RW weight systems are reformulated in terms of the derived category of coherent sheaves \(D(X)\) on \(X\). Section 7, the technical heart of the paper, constructs `symmetric' and `universal enveloping' algebras in this setting, and proves a PBW morphism following an outline of [\textit{N. Markarian}, ``Poincaré--Birkhoff--Witt isomorphism and Riemann--Roch'', preprint (2000)]. Section 8 proves an analogue of the Wheeling Theorem (which gives a Duflo isomorphism), implying existence of a RW weight system for any complex symplectic manifold \(X\) and compatibility of this weight system with natural diagrammatic operations such as ``gluing legs''. Section 9 equips a slight modification of \(D(X)\) with the structure of a braided ribbon category. The resulting braided structure looks new and very different from known braided structures on derived categories, and may give rise to interesting quantum invariants. Finally, Section 10 contains a table of analogies between CS and RW concepts. The reviewer's opinion is that this is a deep, original, and well-written paper which indicates a number of promising research directions in knot theory, hyperkähler geometry, and extended TQFT.