Distinct quantum vacua of topologically ordered states can be tunneled into each other via extended operators. The possible applications include condensed matter and quantum cosmology. We present a straightforward approach to calculate the partition function on various manifolds and ground state degeneracy (GSD), mainly based on continuum/cochain topological quantum field theories (TQFTs), in any dimension. This information can be related to the counting of extended operators of bosonic/fermionic TQFTs. On the lattice scale, anyonic particles/strings live at the ends of line/surface operators. Certain systems in different dimensions are related to each other through dimensional reduction schemes, analogous to (de)categorification. Examples include spin TQFTs derived from gauging the interacting fermionic symmetry-protected topological states (with fermion parity \mathbb{Z}_2^f) of symmetry groups \mathbb{Z}_2^f and \mathbb{Z}_2^f in

Gravitational waves are predicted by the general theory of relativity. In [6] D. Christodoulou showed that gravitational waves have a nonlinear memory. We proved in [3] that the electromagnetic field contributes at highest order to the nonlinear memory effect of gravitational waves. In the present paper, we study this electromagnetic Christodoulou memory effect and compute it for binary neutron star mergers. These are typical sources of gravitational radiation. During these processes, not only mass and momenta are radiated away in form of gravitational waves, but also very strong magnetic fields are produced and radiated away. Thus the observed effect on test masses of a laser interferometer gravitational wave detector will be enlarged by the contribution of the electromagnetic field. Therefore, the present results are important for the planned experiments. Looking at the null asymptotics of spacetimes, which are solutions of the Einstein-Maxwell (EM) equations, we derived in [3] the electromagnetic Christodoulou memory effect. Moreover, our results allow to answer astro-physical questions, as the knowledge about the amount of energy radiated away in a neutron star binary merger enables us to gain information about the source of the gravitational waves.

A large class of symmetry-protected topological phases (SPT) in boson / spin systems have been recently predicted by the group cohomology theory. In this work, we consider SPT states at least with charge symmetry (U(1) or ZN) or spin Sz rotation symmetry (U(1) or ZN) in 2D, 3D, and the surface of 3D. If both are U(1), we apply external electromagnetic field / `spin gauge field' to study the charge / spin response. For the SPT examples we consider (i.e. Uc(1)⋊ZT2, Us(1)×ZT2, Uc(1)×[Us(1)⋊Z2]; subscripts c and s are short for charge and spin; ZT2 and Z2 are time-reversal symmetry and π-rotation about Sy, respectively), many variants of Witten effect in the 3D SPT bulk and various versions of anomalous surface quantum Hall effect are defined and systematically investigated. If charge or spin symmetry reduces to ZN by considering charge-N or spin-N condensate, instead of the linear response approach, we gauge the charge/spin symmetry, leading to a dynamical gauge theory with some remaining global symmetry. The 3D dynamical gauge theory describes a symmetry-enriched topological phase (SET), i.e. a topologically ordered state with global symmetry which admits nontrivial ground state degeneracy depending on spatial manifold topology. For the SPT examples we consider, the corresponding SET states are described by dynamical topological gauge theory with topological BF term and axionic Θ-term in 3D bulk. And the surface of SET is described by the chiral boson theory with quantum anomaly.

A bstract We conjecture that every three dimensional canonical singularity defines a five dimensional N N= 1 SCFT. Flavor symmetry can be found from singularity structure: non-abelian flavor symmetry is read from the singularity type over one dimensional singular locus. The dimension of Coulomb branch is given by the number of compact crepant divisors from a crepant resolution of singularity. The detailed structure of Coulomb branch is described as follows: a) a chamber of Coulomb branch is described by a crepant resolution, and this chamber is given by its Nef cone and the prepotential is computed from triple intersection numbers; b) Crepant resolution is not unique and different resolutions are related by flops; Nef cones from crepant resolutions form a fan which is claimed to be the full Coulomb branch.

Abstract Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs) pertinent to some emergent low energy phenomena of condensed matter lattice models in 2+ 1 and 3+ 1 dimensions are explored. Many of our TQFTs are highly-interacting without free quadratic analogs. Some of our bosonic TQFTs can be regarded as the continuum field theory formulation of DijkgraafWitten twisted discrete gauge theories. Other bosonic TQFTs beyond the DijkgraafWitten description and all fermionic TQFTs (namely the spin TQFTs) are either higher-form gauge theories where particles must have strings attached, or fermionic discrete gauge theories obtained by gauging the fermionic Symmetry-Protected Topological states (SPTs). We analytically calculate both the Abelian and non-Abelian braiding statistics data of anyonic particle and string excitations in these theories, where the statistics data can one-to-one characterize the underlying