2002/09/18 by Christiaan Hofman, Hofman, Christiaan, Jae-Suk Park +1 · 2 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Algebraic structures and combinatorial models #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Homotopy and Cohomology in Algebraic Topology #hep-th #math.QA
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/0209148
40 pages
arxiv created 2002/09/18 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
We study topological open membranes of BF type in a manifest BV formalism. Our main interest is the effect of the bulk deformations on the algebra of boundary operators. This forms a homotopy Lie algebra, which can be understood in terms of a closed string field theory. The simplest models are associated to quasi-Lie bialgebras and are of Chern-Simons type. More generally, the induced structure is a Courant algebroid, or ``quasi-Lie bialgebroid'', with boundary conditions related to Dirac bundles. A canonical example is the topological open membrane coupling to a closed 3-form, modeling the deformation of strings by a C-field. The Courant algebroid for this model describes a modification of deformation quantization. We propose our models as a tool to find a formal solution to the quantization problem of Courant algebroids.