Talk:Chern–Simons form

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

"Seed Interview: James Simons". Seed Magazine. September 19, 2006.

Older comments[edit]

The definition of F is missing. Bartosz 13:03, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

you say "in 1 dimension", "in 3 dimensions" etc... does that refer to the dimension of the manifold?

Why the word "secondary"? I've seen similar terminology in other (related) contexts. - Gauge 06:49, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the precise definition. Perhaps it implies derived from further structure (connection, flat bundle, foliation ...), rather than a plain bundle. Alarmingly I have just seen a reference to tertiary classes. Charles Matthews 08:37, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't Tr[A]=0 in general? If I recall correctly, you can't have a non-trivial gauge theory in 1D anyway.

Tr[A]=0 for SU(N), but you could also have a U(N) gauge theory where the U(1) part gives a non-vanishing trace. In particular for a U(1) gauge theory, Tr[A]=A. But you're right that there are no dynamical degrees of freedom in one dimension (you can just pick a gauge where A=0). You could still have a topological theory, however, where the topological index is the U(1) winding number. 142.3.164.195 21:45, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mention in Seed[edit]

Just wanted to let you guys know that this article was linked to by Seed, here! Good work. -- Gwern (contribs) 20:26, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation[edit]

I just deleted the incorrect assertion that "Chern" is pronounced "Chen". In fact, I knew Chern, and he pronounced his name "Churn". In Chinese, this is apparently a regional (dialect) pronunciation of the name "Chen", but Chern wisely chose a non-standard transliteration in order to avoid confusion with the many other mathematicians named Chen.