2–5 Aug 2022
Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (CMSA), Harvard University
America/New_York timezone

Coupling a Cosmic String to a TQFT

Not scheduled
20m
Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (CMSA), Harvard University

Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (CMSA), Harvard University

20 Garden Street Cambridge, MA 02138

Speaker

Sungwoo Hong (University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory)

Description

In the last few years, the notion of symmetry has been enlarged to "generalized symmetry" or "higher-form symmetry" and these more generalized symmetries have played a critical role in deepening our understanding of QFT, notably IR phases of QFT. In this talk, I will discuss a various ways of coupling the axion-Maxwell theory to a topological field theory (TQFT). Contrary to a common wisdom, I will show that such topological modifications can lead to direct changes in the local physics with possible observable consequences. This surprise can be realized by a dimensional reduction, namely, a coupling to a TQFT in 4d leads to a non-trivial and local impact on the 2d string world-sheet QFT. There also exists a topological modification of the theory, i.e. gauging a discrete subgroup of 0-form shift symmetry, and this time it results in a alteration of spectrum of cosmic strings. If time permits, I will also discuss generalized symmetries and associated higher-groups of these theories.

Primary authors

Sungwoo Hong (University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory) Prof. Lian-Tao Wang (University of Chicago) Dr T. Daniel Brennan (University of Chicago)

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.