nLab Chern-Simons theory as topological string theory

Contents

Contents

Idea

Under mapping the Feynman diagrams of perturbative Chern-Simons theory on a 3-manifold X 3X^3 via 't Hooft double line notation to open string worldsheets, its quantum observables (Wilson loop Vassiliev knot invariants) are equivalent to those of an open topological string theory with target space the cotangent bundle T *X 3T^\ast X^3 with D3-branes. (Witten 92)

For X 3=S 3X^3 = S^3 the 3-sphere, the large N limit is also dual, in a topological string/TQFT-version of AdS/CFT duality, to a closed topological string theory with target space the blow-up of the conifold (Gopakumar-Vafa 98).

References

Review:

Direct open topological string theory

The original article:

Dual closed topological string theory

Including Wilson loop observables:

Last revised on January 7, 2020 at 23:10:28. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.