Chern-Simons, Wess-Zumino and other cocycles from Kashiwara-Vergne and associators

DOI10.1007/S11005-017-0985-4MaRDI QIDQ1745929zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Florian Naef, Xiaomeng Xu, Chenchang Zhu, Anton Alekseev

Publication date 18 April 2018

Published in Letters in Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.08857

associators Chern-Simons form Kontsevich's non-commutative differential calculus Kashiwara-Vergne theory

Identities, free Lie (super)algebras (17B01) Homology of classifying spaces and characteristic classes in algebraic topology (55R40)

Abstract: Descent equations play an important role in the theory of characteristic classes and find applications in theoretical physics, e.g. in the Chern-Simons field theory and in the theory of anomalies. The second Chern class (the first Pontrjagin class) is defined as

p = l a n g l e F, F a n g l e

where

F

is the curvature 2-form and

l a n g l e c d o t, c d o t a n g l e

is an invariant scalar product on the corresponding Lie algebra

m a t h f r a k g

. The descent for

p

gives rise to an element

o m e g a = o m e g a_{3} + o m e g a_{2} + o m e g a_{1} + o m e g a_{0}

of mixed degree. The 3-form part

o m e g a_{3}

is the Chern-Simons form. The 2-form part

o m e g a_{2}

is known as the Wess-Zumino action in physics. The 1-form component

o m e g a_{1}

is related to the canonical central extension of the loop group

L G

. In this paper, we give a new interpretation of the low degree components

o m e g a_{1}

and

o m e g a_{0}

. Our main tool is the universal differential calculus on free Lie algebras due to Kontsevich. We establish a correspondence between solutions of the first Kashiwara-Vergne equation in Lie theory and universal solutions of the descent equation for the second Chern class

p

. In more detail, we define a 1-cocycle

C

which maps automorphisms of the free Lie algebra to one forms. A solution of the Kashiwara-Vergne equation

F

is mapped to

o m e g a_{1} = C (F)

. Furthermore, the component

o m e g a_{0}

is related to the associator corresponding to

F

. It is surprising that while

F

and

P h i

satisfy the highly non-linear twist and pentagon equations, the elements

o m e g a_{1}

and

o m e g a_{0}

solve the linear descent equation.

Recommendations

Cites work

Cited in

(7)

This page was built for publication: Chern-Simons, Wess-Zumino and other cocycles from Kashiwara-Vergne and associators

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q1745929)