Two-Dimensional Yang–Mills Theory on Surfaces with Corners in Batalin–Vilkovisky Formalism

Abstract

In this paper we recover the non-perturbative partition function of 2D~Yang-Mills theory from the perturbative path integral. To achieve this goal, we study the perturbative path integral quantization for 2D~Yang-Mills theory on surfaces with boundaries and corners in the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism (or, more precisely, in its adaptation to the setting with boundaries, compatible with gluing and cutting -- the BV-BFV formalism). We prove that cutting a surface (e.g. a closed one) into simple enough pieces -- building blocks -- and choosing a convenient gauge-fixing on the pieces, and assembling back the partition function on the surface, one recovers the known non-perturbative answers for 2D~Yang-Mills theory.