Self-dual Chern-Simons theories. (English) Zbl 0834.58001

Dunne, Gerald

Lecture Notes in Physics. New Series m: Monographs. m36. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. x, 217 p. (1995).

Self-dual Chern-Simons theories form a new class of self-dual gauge theories and provide a field theoretical formulation of anyonic excitations in planar systems.
Much of the recent attention to these theories is due to the surprising and novel ways in which they differ from the standard Maxwell or Yang- Mills gauge theories. These Chern-Simons theories provide models which possess Bogomol’nyi energy bounds, topological charges, vortex solutions, and supersymmetric extensions, features which are familiar from other well-known self-dual systems as instantons, monopoles and vortices.
This volume is intended to provide a pedagogical introduction to the subject of self-dual Chern-Simons theories, and presents their basic features and properties. It contains an extensive bibliography and an annotated overview of more recent and current works. The intended audience includes graduate students familiar with gauge theory, pure and applied mathematicians, and researchers in related fields.

Reviewer: V.Balan (Bucureşti)

MSC:

58-02	Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to global analysis
81-02	Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to quantum theory
81T13	Yang-Mills and other gauge theories in quantum field theory

Keywords:

relativistic models; non-relativistic models; self-dual theories; Chern- Simons theories