Three Dimensional Chern-Simons Theory as a Theory of Knots and Links
Abstract
Three dimensional SU(2) Chern-Simons theory has been studied as a topological field theory to provide a field theoretic description of knots and links in three dimensions. A systematic method has been developed to obtain the link-invariants within this field theoretic framework. The monodromy properties of the correlators of the associated Wess-Zumino SU(2)k conformal field theory on a two-dimensional sphere prove to be useful tools. The method is simple enough to yield a whole variety of new knot invariants of which the Jones polynomials are the simplest example.
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