A NOTE ON PERTURBATIVE CHERN-SIMONS THEORY

Chern-Simons theory for non-abelian gauge groups is analyzed from a perturbative point of view. Using a gauge invariant regularization based on higher derivatives and Pauli-Villars it is shown that the theory is finite at one loop, and that quantum corrections lead to a one-loop effective action consisting of a Chern-Simons term in which the parameter k is shifted to k → k + cv, where cv is the quadratic Casimir in the adjoint representation of the gauge group. © 1990.