I am interested in the relation between the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer-η invariant and spin topological quantum field theory. In the paper "Gapped Boundary Phases of Topological Insulators via Weak Coupling"
https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04251
by Seiberg and Witten, they presented such a relation between the two.
Let the 3+1 dimensional manifold X be the world volume of a topological insulator. Its bounday W is a 2+1 dimensional manifold. Let χ be a massless Dirac fermion on the bounday manifold W. Then, integrating out the boundary fermion
∫Wd3xiˉχD/χ,
where Dμ=∂μ+iAμ, one has the partition function
Z=|det(iD)|e−iπη(A)/2.
So far, this is just the standard parity anomaly in odd dimensions.
On page 35, the authors claimed that the factor Φ=e−iπη/2 is actually the partition function of a topological quantum field theory, called spin-Ising TQFT. The name comes from the fact that it is related with the 2D Ising model of CFT. The authors explained that this is due to the "Free-Dai theorem".
https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9405012
I don't really understand much from the paper of Freed-Dai theorem because of its heavy mathematics. But from my understanding, it is saying that the η invariant is some kind of topological invariant and cobordism invariant, which satisfies the gluing and surgery axioms of TQFT. Thus, the factor Φ=e−iπη/2 can be treated as the partition function of some TQFT.
Now the question is why this TQFT is the so-called spin-Ising TQFT. The authors claim that the partition function of the spin-Ising TQFT should be of modulus 1 because the Z2 chiral ring generated by the field ψ (from the 2D Ising model {1,σ,ψ}) has only one representation.
Question 1: Why does the fact that the chiral algebra has one representation makes its partition function being of modulus 1?
The authors then showed an example, taking the manifold W to be S2×S1, that the partition function of the corresponding spin-Ising TQFT is ±1, which is indeed a phase. Then, by Freed-Dai theorem, they claimed that in general the partition function of a spin-Ising TQFT should be Φ=e−iπη/2.
I don't really understand much from the paper of Freed-Dai theorem. Could anyone please enlighten me on how one should apply that theorem to this case?
The authors explained in the following that if W has a boundary Σ, then the product of the path integral of the chiral fermion ψ on Σ and the factor Φ is smooth and well-defined because of the Freed-Dai theorem.
However, in our case, the manifold W itself is the boundary of the 3+1-manifold X, and so W has no bounday at all. How should one understand the explanation provided by the authors?
I also posted my question at
https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/436255
New Edition: Suppose the 2+1 dimensional manifold W′ has a boundary Σ. There is a fermionic field ψ defined on the boundary Σ. From the Freed-Dai theorem explained in the paper by Seiberg and Witten, the following path-integral is smooth and well-defined.
e−iπη(W′)/2Zψ[Σ],
where Zϕ[Σ] is the partition function of the 2D fermion ψ on Σ. The authors claimed that this fermion are related with the spin-Ising model of 2D CFT.
Is that true that this is just the holomorphic sector of the free Majorana fermion in 2D?
The motivation behind the above question is that I found that the Ising model in RCFT really looks like a sum over even spin structures of the 2D free majorana fermion. If this were true, does it mean that
Zψ[Σ]=det(iˉ∂)?