Remarks on Chern-Simons invariants (Q982430)

The study of \(3\)-manifold invariants arising from Chern-Simons theory was begun by \textit{E. Witten} [Commun. Math. Phys. 121, No. 3, 351--399 (1989; Zbl 0667.57005)]. In the perturbative framework, these invariants should be obtained from the Feynman diagrams of the theory. One has to fix a gauge and then shows that the resulting invariant is independent of the gauge fixing. This was achieved by \textit{S. Axelrod} and \textit{I. M. Singer} around an acyclic connection [Differential geometric methods in theoretical physics. Proceedings of the 20th international conference, June 3--7, 1991, New York City, NY, USA. Vol. 1--2. Singapore: World Scientific. 3--45 (1992; Zbl 0813.53051); J. Differ. Geom. 39, No. 1, 173--213 (1994; Zbl 0827.53057)], but this condition rules out the trivial connection. Around the trivial connection, this gauge-fixing independence was proved by \textit{D. H. Adams} for rational homology spheres [Lett. Math. Phys. 42, No. 3, 205--214 (1997; Zbl 0884.53055)], and, using a more general definition of propagators, by \textit{M. Kontsevich} [Prog. Math. 120, 97--121 (1994; Zbl 0872.57001)] and \textit{R. Bott} and \textit{A. S. Cattaneo} [J. Differ. Geom. 48, No. 1, 91--133 (1998; Zbl 0953.57008)]. But these papers do not consider general 3-manifolds in detail by the presence of nontrivial zero modes. According to the BV formalism, the invariant should be a solution of the quantum master equation on the space of zero modes modulo certain BV canonical transformations, as considered by \textit{K. J. Costello} [``Renormalisation and the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism'' (2007), \url{arXiv:0706.1533}], who studied the effective action modulo constants. In the first part of the paper under review, this BV approach is made precise and mathematically rigorous for the finite dimensional toy model of Chern-Simons theory used by \textit{A. S. Schwarz} [Phys. Lett. B 620, No. 3--4, 180--186 (2005)], where the algebra of smooth functions on a manifold is replaced by a finite-dimensional dg Frobenius algebra of appropriate degrees. Precisely, the solution to the quantum master equation on cohomology is obtained, the BV canonical transformations are described, and a version of a 3-manifold invariant is described if the homology is concentrated in degrees zero and three, or if the first Betti number is one, or when the Frobenius algebra is formal. In the second part of the paper, it is shown that the results obtained in the finite-dimensional toy model indeed hold for the Chern-Simons theory if the propagator satisfies a list of five properties, which hold e.g. for the Axelrod-Singer propagator, obtaining an invariant of framed 3-manifolds. In this approach, besides these restrictions on the choice of propagator, the invariants are defined up to a difficult to compute universal constant. For the more general propagators of Kontsevich and Bott-Cattaneo, four of the required properties are proved, and the remaining one is conjectured. A related work was done by \textit{V. Iacovino} [``Master equation and perturbative Chern-Simons theory'' (2008), \url{arXiv:0811.2181}].