Theory HEP Seminar

Chern-Simons Field Theory Invariants

P. Ramadevi

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

I will first briefly review historical background and the salient features of knot theory. Then, I will focus on the computation of Chern-Simons field theory invariants for knots, links and three-manifolds. Particularly, I will highlight the powerfulness of the Chern-Simons invariants in comparison to the well-known Jones, HOMFLY-PT and Kauffman polynomials. I will also present the developments in this century connecting the integrality properties of these invariants to the BPS states in string theory/M-theory.