11.11.2021 (Thursday)

Gauged sigma models from four-dimensional Chern-Simons

Journal Club Jake Stedman (King's College London)

at:
15:45 Other
room Zoom, instructions in abstract
abstract:

Several years ago, a new gauge theory called four-dimensional Chern-Simons was introduced by Costello in an attempt to explain the integrability of various two-dimensional models using techniques in gauge theory. My work focuses on the use of four-dimensional Chern-Simons to explain the integrability of two-dimensional sigma models. I will begin by reviewing the construction of the Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) model as the boundary theory of three-dimensional Chern-Simons theory as was introduced by Moore and Seiberg. This will allow me to introduce the analogous construction of Costello and Yamazaki, in which two-dimensional sigma models appear as theories on defects in four-dimensional Chern-Simons. This naturally leads to a discussion of my work in which I construct a large class of gauged sigma models by coupling together two four-dimensional Chern-Simons theories. I will argue that the structure of four-dimensional Chern-Simons suggests that these models are integrable and finish by constructing the gauged WZW model and conformal Toda theories. This talk is based on: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.08101. ---- Part of the London Integrability Journal Club. Please register at integrability-london.weebly.com if you are a new participant. The link will be emailed on Tuesday.