Quarkonium Production in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions

In the book Witten explains his three-dimensional construction of Jones polynomials via Chern-Simons gauge theory. The classical moduli space consists of unitary flat connections. To quantize it, he constructs a Hilbert space consisting of holomorphic sections of the natural determinant bundle over the moduli space, or non-Abelian theta functions. He explains that the quantization is independent of complex structures so that the theory becomes topological. He then constructs morphisms in terms of the Feynman path integral. He provides the relevant background, such as the Feynman -- Kac formula and Feynman diagrams, thus making the book more accessible to mathematicians. His construction leads to many beautiful applications, such as the skein relation, the surgery formula and a proof of Verlinde's formula.