Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 13:35:41 -0500
From: Edward Witten <witten@sns.ias.edu>


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.