Theory HEP Seminar

Knot invariants from Chern-Simons theory (2 parts)

Satoshi Nawata

NIKHEF - Amsterdam

I will give an introductory talk on computations of quantum knot invariants from Chern-Simons theory. The seminal paper by Witten showed that the expectation value of the Wilson loop along a knot in Chern-Simons theory provides quantum knot invariants. For a class of torus knots/links, there is a way to compute quantum invariants with arbitrary representation of any semi-simple gauge groups. However, it is in general technically difficult to obtain quantum invariants of non-torus knots/links. I will explain how one can compute quantum invariants of both torus and non-torus knots.