The Chern-Simons invariants for general compact Lie groups
Sponsor(s): Mathematics
The Chern-Simons invariants are 3-manifold invariants arising from representations of the fundamental group into a Lie group G. These have been well-studied for G = SU(2), but much less is known about them for more general G. In this talk, I will review the definition of these invariants and discuss results that extend to arbitrary compact G several well-known SU(2)-computations. These extensions all have the flavor of "if you know the invariants for SU(2), then you know the invariants for general compact G". This is joint work with Kevin Fournier.