Chern-Simons Theory and the $R$-Matrix

Abstract

It has been a long-standing problem how to relate Chern-Simons theory to the quantum groups. In this paper we recover the classical $r$-matrix directly from a 3-dimensional Chern-Simons theory with boundary conditions, thus creating a direct link to the quantum groups. It is known that the Jones polynomials can be constructed using an $R$-matrix. We show how these constructions can be seen to arise directly from 3-dimensional Chern-Simons theory.