Transgression forms as unifying principle in field theory

Abstract

In this work I consider extensions of Chern-Simons gravities and supergravities associated to the use of Transgression forms as actions, instead of Chern-Simons forms. It is noted that Transgression Forms yields a essencially unique prescription of boundary terms which allows: (i) to make Chern-Simons theories truly gauge invariant, instead of just quasi-invariant, (ii) to have a well defined action principle, so that the action is an extremum when the field equations hold, (iii) to compute covariant finite conserved charges in agreement with those obtained using hamiltonian methods, (iv) to regularize the action so that the euclidean action is finite and the black hole thermodynamics derived from this action agrees with the one obtained by hamiltonian methods. In addition a class of models for extended objects or branes with or without supersymmetry is introduced and studied. The actions for those models and the space-time in which they propagate is given by the sum of integrals of transgression forms for ordinary gauge groups, space-time groups orr the supersymmetric extensions of space-time groups. This brane models are generally covariant, background independent and true gauge systems.