Topological boundary conditions in abelian Chern-Simons theory

Abstract

We study topological boundary conditions in abelian Chern–Simons theory and line operators confined to such boundaries. From the mathematical point of view, their relationships are described by a certain 2-category associated to an even integer-valued symmetric bilinear form (the matrix of Chern–Simons couplings). We argue that boundary conditions correspond to Lagrangian subgroups in the finite abelian group classifying bulk line operators (the discriminant group). We describe properties of boundary line operators; in particular we compute the boundary associator. We also study codimension one defects (surface operators) in abelian Chern–Simons theories. As an application, we obtain a classification of such theories up to isomorphism, in general agreement with the work of Belov and Moore.