Talk:Topological quantum field theory

message: "Physically speaking, topological field theories are not especially interesting.  They are toy models, far simpler in structure than the quantum field theories which describe real-world physics.  They can be thought of as warm-up exercises for the much harder task of quantizing gravity.  Quantum gravity is believed to be background-independent (in some suitable sense), and TQFTs provide examples of background independent quantum field theories.  Unfortunately, they are only background independent in a fairly trivial sense:  they are independent of the spacetime metric (thought of as a background gravitational field), but they do not admit any local degrees of freedom.  There is no radiation in a TQFT:  no propagating waves, no gluons, no gravitons."
* Implying that TQFTs don't "describe real-world physics" is inconsistent with the preceding paragraph.
* "There is no radiation in a TQFT:  no propagating waves, no gluons, no gravitons" conflicts with what I've seen elsewhere.
I'm assuming that there's a confusion here, and editing accordingly. 75.62.3.41 08:03, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed most of a paragraph 

message: Quite impressing introduction.  Even though I think the emphasize on a metric background is a bit strong (p.ex. metric independent, many TQFTs don't need a metric at all).
Can you give references of good introductions/ overviews.  A review article would be nice.
[melli]146.186.134.176 (talk) 00:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  referable literature required 

message: Even though I have already seen this classification in physics, I don't understand where typical topological sigma-models fit into it, p.ex. Poisson sigma model ([hep-th/9405110]), Courant sigma model ([hep-th/0608150]) or Dirac sigma model ([hep-th/0411112]).
[melli]146.186.134.176 (talk) 01:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  strange classification 

message: I am curious for some references on this section on fixed spacetime, i just saw a fantastic talk on the topic and am interested in reading more, i am interested in where this info is from, also in general having more references would be greatm perhaps a recommended reading?
Sean, a student 21:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  references for fixed spacetime 

message: I'm going to describe the Atiyah's original axioms from his papers in 1980's. I will write the original axioms, relations to physics and some examples and add some reference of them.
Enyokoyama (talk) 15:10, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  describe the Atiyah's original axioms 

message: Dear PKT. Thanks for your pointing out this point! I intend to refer partition function in quantum field theory. But there are several partition functions, which essentially should be as same as each other, I think. I will fixed it according to your advice. I wonder which partition function is relevant. It might be difficult problem.--Enyokoyama (talk) 12:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  disambiguation needed about partition function 

message: I think the "Topological Dipole Theory" reference is completely random and needs to be removed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.110.91.126 (talk) 16:18, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove "Linker" reference 

message: Large parts of this article are taken verbatim from Atiyah's article.  (Sometimes, a few sentences are left out so that it becomes non-sensical.) --345Kai (talk) 21:29, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plagiarism? 

message: There are no reference to any of the claims in that section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.23.219.173 (talk) 17:29, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: It is promoting Ovchinnikov's work, which can be found on arxiv if references are needed, but the idea presented in the article, that casting everything as a TQFT is either possible or productive has not caught on. 73.89.25.252 (talk) 18:15, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference missing the "Witten-type TQFTs and dynamical systems" section