Gauging the Wess-Zumino term of a sigma model with boundary

DOI10.1088/1126-6708/2005/08/086arXivhep-th/0506049MaRDI QIDQ6467799FDOQ6467799

Authors: José Figueroa-O'Farrill, N. Mohammedi 

Publication date: 6 June 2005

Abstract: We investigate the gauging of the Wess-Zumino term of a sigma model with boundary. We derive a set of obstructions to gauging and we interpret them as the conditions for the Wess-Zumino term to extend to a closed form in a suitable equivariant relative de Rham complex. We illustrate this with the two-dimensional sigma model and we show that the new obstructions due to the boundary can be interpreted in terms of Courant algebroids. We specialise to the case of the Wess-Zumino-Witten model, where it is proved that there always exist suitable boundary conditions which allow gauging any subgroup which can be gauged in the absence of a boundary. We illustrate this with two natural classes of gaugings: (twisted) diagonal subgroups with boundary conditions given by (twisted) conjugacy classes, and chiral isotropic subgroups with boundary conditions given by cosets.

This page was built for publication: Gauging the Wess-Zumino term of a sigma model with boundary

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6467799)