Collaboration
Edward Witten (IAS) is not a collaborator of the group; there are no joint papers. As with hong-liu, the collaborator role here marks a reference author. Witten is nonetheless the most influential outside author in this wiki and, by the researcher’s own account, a major influence on the researcher’s career. Eight of the ★ papers in the researcher’s Zotero are Witten’s, more than any other author (see sources/manifest.yaml, influential_papers), and the immersion-plan treats Witten as the hub of the entanglement–symmetries–holography school and the model for its writing apprenticeship.
Witten’s work touches every line of the wiki:
- Topological phases and anomalies. Three Lectures on Topological Phases of Matter and Fermion Path Integrals and Topological Phases (both 2016, ★). Anomaly Inflow and the η-Invariant (with Yonekura, 2019) is a Track A deep read. The Witten effect () organizes Week 12 of the generalized-symmetries course (week-12-theta-terms-witten-effect) and underlies axionic-electrodynamics.
- Chern–Simons theory and the quantum Hall effect. Quantum Field Theory and the Jones Polynomial (1989), and the expository 2026-witten-chern-simons-quantum-hall (2026), ingested here: chern-simons-theory, quantum-hall-effect.
- Entanglement and algebras in QFT. The APS Medal article on entanglement properties of QFT (RMP 90, 2018, ★) is the main reference of the group’s notes on Summers’ Bell-CHSH work. A Mini-Introduction to Information Theory (2020, ★).
- Crossed products and gravity. Gravity and the Crossed Product and Why Does QFT in Curved Spacetime Make Sense? (2022, both ★), together with the Chandrasekaran–Longo–Penington–Witten and Chandrasekaran–Penington–Witten papers. These are the spine of Semester II of the algebraic-QFT course and the frontier the embezzlement program borders (crossed-product-construction, crossed-product-and-island-formula).
- Holography. Anti de Sitter Space and Holography (1998), the GKP–Witten formula.
- Other ★ papers. Light Rays, Singularities, and All That (RMP 92, 2020) and Introduction to Black Hole Thermodynamics (2025).
Joint Work
No joint publications. Witten’s papers enter the wiki as sources: 2026-witten-chern-simons-quantum-hall so far, with the ★ papers listed above as candidates for ingestion.
Expertise
- Topological quantum field theory: Chern–Simons theory, knot invariants, Donaldson/Seiberg–Witten theory
- Anomalies, anomaly inflow, η-invariants, and topological phases of matter (fermionic path integrals, time reversal, θ = π)
- The θ-angle and the Witten effect; electric–magnetic duality and S-duality
- Entanglement and von Neumann algebras in QFT; crossed products, observers, and generalized entropy
- String theory, M-theory, and gauge/gravity duality
- Expository writing for mathematicians: two papers in the Bulletin of the AMS (2007; 2026)