2025/10/21 by Pavel Mnëv, Mnev, Pavel, Konstantin Wernli +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · Mathematics · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Geometry and complex manifolds #Geometric Analysis and Curvature Flows
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.18653
We study the perturbative path integral of Chern-Simons theory (the effective BV action on zero-modes) in Lorenz gauge, expanded around a (possibly non-acyclic) flat connection, as a family over the smooth irreducible stratum M' ⊂ M of the moduli space of flat connections. We prove that it is horizontal with respect to the Grothendieck connection up to a BV-exact term. From it, we construct a volume form on M' - the "global partition function" - whose cohomology class is independent of the metric, and so is a 3-manifold invariant. As an element of the construction, we construct an extension of the perturbative partition function to a nonhomogeneous form on the space of triples (A,A',g) consisting of (1) a "kinetic" flat connection A around which Chern-Simons action is expanded, (2) a "gauge-fixing" flat connection A', (3) a metric g. This extension is horizontal with respect to an appropriate Gauss-Manin superconnection (which involves the BV operator as a degree zero component).