Abstract
We determine the unitary and anti-unitary Lagrangian and quantum symmetries of arbitrary abelian Chern-Simons theories. The symmetries depend sensitively on the arithmetic properties (e.g. prime factorization) of the matrix of Chern-Simons levels, revealing interesting connections with number theory. We give a complete characterization of the symmetries of abelian topological field theories and along the way find many theories that are non-trivially time-reversal invariant by virtue of a quantum symmetry, including U(1)k Chern-Simons theory and (ℤk)ℓ gauge theories. For example, we prove that U(1)k Chern-Simons theory is time-reversal invariant if and only if −1 is a quadratic residue modulo k, which happens if and only if all the prime factors of k are Pythagorean (i.e., of the form 4n + 1), or Pythagorean with a single additional factor of 2. Many distinct non-abelian finite symmetry groups are found.
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Delmastro, D., Gomis, J. Symmetries of abelian Chern-Simons theories and arithmetic. J. High Energ. Phys. 2021, 6 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP03(2021)006
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP03(2021)006