The challenge of identifying symmetry-protected topological states (SPTs) is due to their lack of symmetry-breaking order parameters and intrinsic topological orders. For this reason, it is impossible to formulate SPTs under Ginzburg-Landau theory or probe SPTs via fractionalized bulk excitations and topology-dependent ground state degeneracy. However, the partition functions from path integrals with various symmetry twists are the universal SPT invariants defining topological probe responses, fully characterizing SPTs. In this work, we use gauge fields to represent those symmetry twists in closed spacetimes of any dimensionality and arbitrary topology. This allows us to express the SPT invariants in terms of continuum field theory. We show that SPT invariants of pure gauge actions describe the SPTs predicted by group cohomology, while the mixed gauge-gravity actions describe the beyond-group-cohomology SPTs, recently observed by Kapustin. We find new examples of mixed gauge-gravity actions for U(1) SPTs in 4+1D via mixing the gauge first Chern class with a gravitational Chern-Simons term, or viewed as a 5+1D Wess-Zumino-Witten term with a Pontryagin class. We rule out U(1) SPTs in 3+1D mixed with a Stiefel-Whitney class. We also apply our approach to the bosonic/fermionic topological insulators protected by U(1) charge and Z_2^T time-reversal symmetries whose pure gauge action is the axion θ-term. Field theory representations of SPT invariants not only serve as tools for classifying SPTs, but also guide us in designing physical probes for them. In addition, our field theory representations are independently powerful for studying group cohomology within the mathematical context.

We construct two non-semisimple braided ribbon tensor categories of modules for each singlet vertex operator algebra M(p), p≥2. The first category consists of all finite-length M(p)-modules with atypical composition factors, while the second is the subcategory of modules that induce to local modules for the triplet vertex operator algebra W(p). We show that every irreducible module has a projective cover in the second of these categories, although not in the first, and we compute all fusion products involving atypical irreducible modules and their projective covers.

We determine exact exponential asymptotics of eigenfunctions and of corresponding transfer matrices of the almost Mathieu operators for all frequencies in the localization regime. This uncovers a universal structure in their behavior, governed by the continued fraction expansion of the frequency, explaining some predictions in physics literature. In addition it proves the arithmetic version of the frequency transition conjecture. Finally, it leads to an explicit description of several non-regularity phenomena in the corresponding non-uniformly hyperbolic cocycles, which is also of interest as both the first natural example of some of those phenomena and, more generally, the first non-artificial model where non-regularity can be explicitly studied.

We show that direct limit completions of vertex tensor categories inherit vertex and braided tensor category structures, under conditions that hold for example for all known Virasoro and affine Lie algebra tensor categories. A consequence is that the theory of vertex operator (super)algebra extensions also applies to infinite-order extensions. As an application, we relate rigid and non-degenerate vertex tensor categories of certain modules for both the affine vertex superalgebra of osp(1|2) and the N=1 super Virasoro algebra to categories of Virasoro algebra modules via certain cosets.

We demonstrate how path integrals often used in problems of theoretical physics can be adapted to provide a machinery for performing Bayesian inference in function spaces. Such inference comes about naturally in the study of inverse problems of recovering continuous (infinite dimensional) coefficient functions from ordinary or partial differential equations, a problem which is typically ill-posed. Regularization of these problems using L2 function spaces (Tikhonov regularization) is equivalent to Bayesian probabilistic inference, using a Gaussian prior. The Bayesian interpretation of inverse problem regularization is useful since it allows one to quantify and characterize error and degree of precision in the solution of inverse problems, as well as examine assumptions made in solving the problem—namely whether the subjective choice of regularization is compatible with prior knowledge. Using path-integral formalism, Bayesian inference can be explored through various perturbative techniques, such as the semiclassical approximation, which we use in this manuscript. Perturbative path-integral approaches, while offering alternatives to computational approaches like Markov-Chain-Monte-Carlo (MCMC), also provide natural starting points for MCMC methods that can be used to refine approximations. In this manuscript, we illustrate a path-integral formulation for inverse problems and demonstrate it on an inverse problem in membrane biophysics as well as inverse problems in potential theories involving the Poisson equation.