Topological Charge of Lattice Abelian Gauge Theory

Motivated by recent literature on the possible existence of a second higher-temperature phase transition in Quantum Chromodynamics, we revisit the proposal that colour confinement is related to the dynamics of magnetic monopoles using methods of Topological Data Analysis, which provides a mathematically rigorous characterisation of topological properties of quantities defined on a lattice. After introducing persistent homology, one of the main tools in Topological Data Analys...

We present a detailed path integral derivation of the topological response of gapped free fermions, in $2+1$ dimensions, to an external $\text{U}(1)$ Gauge field. The well-known Hall response is obtained by identifying the Chern-Simons term in the effective action with the correct coefficient. We extend the result to $2d+1$ dimensions in which the response is associated to a Chern-Simons term with a coefficient related to a characteristic class coming from topological band th...

Topological charge of families of lattice gauge fields is defined fermionically via families index theory for the overlap Dirac operator. Certain obstructions to gauge invariance of the overlap chiral fermion determinant, as well as the lattice analogues of certain obstructions to gauge fixings without the Gribov problem, have natural descriptions in this context.

We study a topological Abelian gauge theory that generalizes the Abelian Chern-Simons one, and that leads in a natural way to the Milnor's link invariant $\bar{\mu}(1,2,3)$ when the classical action on-shell is calculated.

We investigate the index of the Neuberger's Dirac operator in abelian gauge theories on finite lattices by numerically analyzing the spectrum of the hermitian Wilson-Dirac operator for a continuous family of gauge fields connecting different topological sectors. By clarifying the characteristic structure of the spectrum leading to the index theorem we show that the index coincides to the topological charge for a wide class of gauge field configurations. We also argue that the...

We construct lattice gauge field theory based on a quantum group on a lattice of dimension 1. Innovations include a coalgebra structure on the connections, and an investigation of connections that are not distinguishable by observables. We prove that when the quantum group is a deformation of a connected algebraic group (over the complex numbers), then the algebra of observables forms a deformation quantization of the ring of characters of the fundamental group of the lattice...

The index bundle of the Overlap lattice Dirac operator over the orbit space of lattice gauge fields is introduced and studied. Obstructions to the vanishing of gauge anomalies in the Overlap formulation of lattice chiral gauge theory have a natural description in this context. Our main result is a formula for the topological charge (integrated Chern character) of the index bundle over even-dimensional spheres in the orbit space. It reduces under suitable conditions to the top...

We review the method developed in Pisa to determine the topological susceptibility in lattice QCD and present a collection of new and old results obtained by the method.

Combinatorial gauge symmetry is a principle that allows us to construct lattice gauge theories with two key and distinguishing properties: a) only one- and two-body interactions are needed; and b) the symmetry is exact rather than emergent in an effective or perturbative limit. The ground state exhibits topological order for a range of parameters. This paper is a generalization of the construction to any finite Abelian group. In addition to the general mathematical constructi...

We introduce Deligne cohomology that classifies U(1) fibre bundles over 3-manifolds endowed with connections. We show how the structure of Deligne cohomology classes provides a way to perform exact (non-perturbative) computations in U(1) Chern-Simons theory (resp. BF theory) at the level of functional integrals. The partition functions (and observables) of these theories are strongly related to topological invariants well-known by the mathematicians.