Cohomological field theories and generalized Seiberg-Witten equations

Abstract

We introduce a formalism for constructing cohomological field theories (CohFT) out of nonlinear PDEs based on the first author's previous work (arXiv:2202.12425). We apply the formalism to the generalized Seiberg-Witten equations and show that the obtained CohFT functionals agree with the existing ones proposed by physicists. This leads to a unified perspective from which to view the full supersymmetric functionals of the Donaldson-Witten, Seiberg-Witten, and Kapustin-Witten theories and understand the relations between them. We also outline a quantization program for our framework and discuss its potential to produce manifold invariants and quantum cohomologies.