Abstract

K-theory in various forms has recently received much attention in 10-dimensional superstring theory. Our raised consciousness about twisted K-theory led to the serendipitous discovery that it enters in a different way into 3-dimensional topological field theories, in particular Chern-Simons theory. Namely, as the title of the paper reports, the Verlinde algebra is a certain twisted K-theory group. This assertion, and its proof, is joint work with Michael Hopkins and Constantin Teleman. The general theorem and proof will be presented elsewhere [FHT]; our goal here is to explain some background, demonstrate the theorem in a simple nontrivial case, and motivate it through the connection with topological field theory. From a mathematical point of view the Verlinde algebra is defined in the theory of loop groups. Let G be a compact Lie group. There is a version of the theorem for any compact group G, but here for the most part we focus on connected, simply connected, and simple groups—G = SU2 is the simplest example. In this case a central extension of the free loop group LG is determined by the level, which is a positive integer k. There is a finite set of equivalence classes of positive energy representations of this central extension; let Vk(G) denote the free abelian group they generate. One of the influences of 2-dimensional conformal field theory on the theory of loop groups is the construction of an algebra structure on Vk(G), the fusion product. This is the Verlinde algebra [V]. Let G act on itself by conjugation. Then with our assumptions the equivariant cohomology group H3 G (G) is free of rank one. Let h(G) be the dual Coxeter number of G, and define ζ(k) ∈ H3 G (G) to be k + h(G) times a generator. We will see that elements of H3 may be used to twist K-theory, and so elements of equivariant H 3 twist equivariant K-theory. Theorem (Freed-Hopkins-Teleman). There is an isomorphism of algebras

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