Coupling topological field theories to topological backgrounds: the two-dimensional example

by Dario Rosa

Tuesday 23 Aug 2016, 14:30 → 15:30 Europe/Rome

605 (Dipartimento di Fisica Genova)

Topological field theories (TFTs) are commonly divided in two classes: the theories of Schwarz type and the theories of Witten type. The former have an action which is manifestly independent from the metric, whereas the latter are obtained from a supersymmetric field theory via topological twist. In this talk we will see that a TFT of Schwarz type, when coupled to suitable topological backgrounds, develops a topological supersymmetry, which transforms it in a theory of Witten type. The initial Schwarz's TFT can be obtained by considering singular points in the space of the topological backgrounds. We will discuss in details the example of two-dimensional YM and, time permitting, we will discuss also the generalization to more general two-dimensional Poisson sigma models.

Slides Rosa_august_2016.pdf