Lie groups and Chern-Simons Theory

Abstract

Witten introduced classical Chern-Simons theory to topology in 1989, when he defined an invariant for knots in 3-manifolds by an integral over a certain infinite-dimensional space, which up to today have not been entirely understood. However, they motivated lots of interesting questions and results in knot theory and low-dimensional topology, as well as the development of entirely new fields. These are lecture notes for a course in Lie groups and Chern-Simons Theory aimed at graduate students.