Chern-Simons theory encoded on a spin chain

Abstract

We construct a 1d spin chain Hamiltonian with generic interactions and prove that the thermal correlation functions of the model admit an explicit random matrix representation. As an application of the result, we show how the observables of $U(N)$ Chern-Simons theory on $S^{3}$ can be reproduced with the thermal correlation functions of the 1d spin chain, which is of the XX type, with a suitable choice of exponentially decaying interactions between infinitely many neighbours. We show that for this model, the correlation functions of the spin chain at a finite temperature $\beta =1$ give the Chern-Simons partition function, quantum dimensions and the full topological $S$-matrix.