Abelian Chern-Simons theory

Abstract

We give a construction of the abelian Chern-Simons gauge theory from the point of view of a 2+1 dimensional topological quantum field theory. The definition of the quantum theory relies on geometric quantization ideas which have been previously explored in connection to the nonabelian Chern-Simons theory [JW,ADW]. We formulate the topological quantum field theory in terms of the category of extended 2- and 3-manifolds introduced by Walker [Wa] and prove that it satisfies the axioms of unitary topological quantum field theories formulated by Atiyah [A1].