10 research outputs found
On the Brauer groups of symmetries of abelian Dijkgraaf-Witten theories
Symmetries of three-dimensional topological field theories are naturally
defined in terms of invertible topological surface defects. Symmetry groups are
thus Brauer-Picard groups. We present a gauge theoretic realization of all
symmetries of abelian Dijkgraaf-Witten theories. The symmetry group for a
Dijkgraaf-Witten theory with gauge group a finite abelian group , and with
vanishing 3-cocycle, is generated by group automorphisms of , by
automorphisms of the trivial Chern-Simons 2-gerbe on the stack of -bundles,
and by partial e-m dualities.
We show that transmission functors naturally extracted from extended
topological field theories with surface defects give a physical realization of
the bijection between invertible bimodule categories of a fusion category and
braided auto-equivalences of its Drinfeld center. The latter provides the
labels for bulk Wilson lines; it follows that a symmetry is completely
characterized by its action on bulk Wilson lines.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures. v2: Minor changes, typos corrected and
references added. v3: Typos correcte
From non-semisimple Hopf algebras to correlation functions for logarithmic CFT
We use factorizable finite tensor categories, and specifically the
representation categories of factorizable ribbon Hopf algebras H, as a
laboratory for exploring bulk correlation functions in local logarithmic
conformal field theories. For any ribbon Hopf algebra automorphism omega of H
we present a candidate for the space of bulk fields and endow it with a natural
structure of a commutative symmetric Frobenius algebra. We derive an expression
for the corresponding bulk partition functions as bilinear combinations of
irreducible characters; as a crucial ingredient this involves the Cartan matrix
of the category. We also show how for any candidate bulk state space of the
type we consider, correlation functions of bulk fields for closed oriented
world sheets of any genus can be constructed that are invariant under the
natural action of the relevant mapping class group.Comment: 41 pages, several figures. version 2: typos corrected, bibliography
updated, introduction extended, a few minor clarifications adde
Twenty-five years of two-dimensional rational conformal field theory
In this article we try to give a condensed panoramic view of the development
of two-dimensional rational conformal field theory in the last twenty-five
years.Comment: A review for the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Mathematical
Physics. Some references added, typos correcte
Bicategories for boundary conditions and for surface defects in 3-d TFT
We analyze topological boundary conditions and topological surface defects in
three-dimensional topological field theories of Reshetikhin-Turaev type based
on arbitrary modular tensor categories. Boundary conditions are described by
central functors that lift to trivializations in the Witt group of modular
tensor categories. The bicategory of boundary conditions can be described
through the bicategory of module categories over any such trivialization. A
similar description is obtained for topological surface defects. Using string
diagrams for bicategories we also establish a precise relation between special
symmetric Frobenius algebras and Wilson lines involving special defects. We
compare our results with previous work of Kapustin-Saulina and of Kitaev-Kong
on boundary conditions and surface defects in abelian Chern-Simons theories and
in Turaev-Viro type TFTs, respectively.Comment: 34 pages, some figures. v2: references added. v3: typos corrected and
biliography update
Atomic inner-shell X-ray laser at 1.46 nanometres pumped by an X-ray free-electron laser
Since the invention of the laser more than 50 years ago, scientists have striven to achieve amplification on atomic transitions of increasingly shorter wavelength. The introduction of X-ray free-electron lasers makes it possible to pump new atomic X-ray lasers with ultrashort pulse duration, extreme spectral brightness and full temporal coherence. Here we describe the implementation of an X-ray laser in the kiloelectronvolt energy regime, based on atomic population inversion and driven by rapid K-shell photo-ionization using pulses from an X-ray free-electron laser. We established a population inversion of the Kα transition in singly ionized neon at 1.46 nanometres (corresponding to a photon energy of 849 electronvolts) in an elongated plasma column created by irradiation of a gas medium. We observed strong amplified spontaneous emission from the end of the excited plasma. This resulted in femtosecond-duration, high-intensity X-ray pulses of much shorter wavelength and greater brilliance than achieved with previous atomic X-ray lasers. Moreover, this scheme provides greatly increased wavelength stability, monochromaticity and improved temporal coherence by comparison with present-day X-ray free-electron lasers. The atomic X-ray lasers realized here may be useful for high-resolution spectroscopy and nonlinear X-ray studies