Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 13:35:41 -0500 From: Edward Witten The reading for this week consists of portions of two papers ``On Quantum Gauge Theories In Two Dimenisons,'' Comm. Math. Phys. 141 (1991) 253 ``Two Dimensional Gauge Theories Revisited'' J. Geom. Phys. 9 (1992) 303-368. Paula Bozzay will have (by late Monday or early Tuesday) copies of the relevant portions of those papers. I actually have arranged to copy half of the first paper and all of the second one, because it was too hard to make a precise selection corresponding to what I will cover. However, as background for Thursday's lecture, you can concentrate on just a couple of bits: From the first paper (On Quantum Gauge Theories In Two Dimensions) the relevant part is the direct computation of the partition function in section 2. From the second paper (Two Dimensional Gauge Theories Revisited) the relevant part is the purely topological discussion of the localization theorem at the beginning of the paper, and the application to gauge theories in sections 4 and 5. In between is a discussion of a particular way to adapt the topological localization to gauge theory, which you won't need as background for the lecture.