The de Rham-Federer theory of differential characters and character duality

DOI10.1353/AJM.2003.0025zbMATH Open1060.58004arXivmath/0512251OpenAlexW2594057360MaRDI QIDQ4454887FDOQ4454887

F. Reese Harvey, John Zweck, H. Blaine jun. Lawson

Publication date: 8 March 2004

Published in: American Journal of Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The theory of differential characters is developed completely from a de Rham - Federer viewpoint. Characters are defined as equivalence classes of special currents, called sparks, which appear naturally in the theory of singular connections. There are many different spaces of currents which yield the character groups. A multiplication of de Rham-Federer characters is defined using transversality results for flat and rectifiable currents. There is a natural equivalence of ring functors from deRham - Federer characters to Cheeger-Simons characters. Differential characters have a topology and natural smooth Pontrjagin duals (introduced here). A principal result is the formulation and proof of duality for characters on oriented manifolds. It is shown that the pairing (a,b) --> a*b([X]) given by multiplication and evaluation on the fundamental cycle, gives an isomorphism of the group of differential characters of degree k with the dual to characters in degree n-k-1 where n = dim(X). It is also shown that there are natural Thom homomorphisms for differential characters. Gysin maps are also defined for differential characters. Many examples including Morse sparks, Hodge sparks and characteristic sparks are examined in detail.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0512251

zbMATH Keywords

Chern-Simons theorydifferential characters

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Other homology theories in algebraic topology (55N35) Integral geometry (53C65) de Rham theory in global analysis (58A12) Characteristic classes and numbers in differential topology (57R20) Differential forms in global analysis (58A10) Currents in global analysis (58A25)

Cited In (29)

• Lectures on Cohomology, T-Duality, and Generalized Geometry
• Axiomatic characterization of ordinary differential cohomology
• Spark and Deligne-Beilinson cohomology on orbifolds
• Path-integral invariants in abelian Chern-Simons theory
• Singularities and Chern-Weil theory. II: Geometric atomicity
• Abelian BF theory and Turaev-Viro invariant
• Higher dimensional abelian Chern-Simons theories and their link invariants
• Heisenberg groups and noncommutative fluxes
• Differential Characters for K-theory
• Cheeger-Chern-Simons theory and differential string classes
• Abelian link invariants and homology
• Deligne–Beilinson cohomology and Abelian link invariants: Torsion case
• Spark complexes on good effective orbifold atlases categorically
• 3D topological models and Heegaard splitting. II. Pontryagin duality and observables
• Uniqueness of differential characters and differential \(K\)-theory via homological algebra
• 3D topological models and Heegaard splitting. I. Partition function
• Aeppli-Bott-Chern cohomology and Deligne cohomology from a viewpoint of Harvey-Lawson's spark complex
• Geometric pushforward in Hodge filtered complex cobordism and secondary invariants
• Hadamard states for quantum abelian duality
• Three-manifold invariant from functional integration
• A generalization of Abel's theorem and the Abel-Jacobi map
• Nontame Morse–Smale flows and odd Chern–Weil theory
• Mock modular forms and geometric theta functions for indefinite quadratic forms
• Gauss-Bonnet-Chern theorem and differential characters
• Abelian duality on globally hyperbolic spacetimes
• Gerbes on \(G_2\) manifolds
• Aspects of higher-abelian gauge theories at zero and finite temperature: topological Casimir effect, duality and Polyakov loops
• Differential cohomology and locally covariant quantum field theory
• Functional integration and gauge ambiguities in generalized abelian gauge theories

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