I have been studying the paper "Gapped Boundary Phases of Topological Insulators via
Weak Coupling" https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04251
On page 13, it talks about the spin/charge relation.
Let a1, a2, ... ,an be U(1)-gauge fields, and A be classical electromagnetic background field. We consider the following 3d Chern-Simons action
S=∫W(kij4πai∧daj+qi2πA∧dai).
Suppose the theory satisfies the usual spin/charge relation. If the action is well-defined mod 2πZ on any spinC manifold W, with spinC connection A, then the condition for the coefficients is
qi≡kiimod 2(1)
Consider the Wilson operator
exp(inikij∮aj)
with integer ni. Using standard formula for Abelian Chern-Simons theory, this operator has spin nikijnj/2. Its coupling to A shows that its charge is qini. This Wilson operator should satisfy the usual spin/charge relation and it gives the relation (1).
My questions are
1. What is spin/charge relation?
2. How to derive the relation (1)?
3. How to derive the spin and charge of the Wilson operator?
New Edition: Solving the equation of motion of the action, one has
(kij4π+kji4π)daj=qi2πdA=kij2πdaj
or dai=qikijdA. Plugging this EOM back to the Wilson operator, one has
exp(inikij∮aj)=exp(inigi∮A)
So this probably gives the value of the charge, is that correct?
How to compute its spin then? In 2+1 dimensions, the spin is the unitary representation of SO(2), which is just U(1). But the Wilson operator is U(1)-invariant, so it is a scalar.
Is the EOM,
daj=qikijdA
also related with the relation (1) for A is a spinC-connection?