{"paper":{"title":"The Cotton tensor and Chern-Simons invariants in dimension $3$: an introduction","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"math.DG","authors_text":"Sergiu Moroianu","submitted_at":"2015-09-17T08:08:00Z","abstract_excerpt":"Chern-Simons invariants of closed oriented Riemannian $3$-manifolds are introduced and studied from the basics. Their first-order variation is the Cotton tensor. The properties of the Cotton tensor: symmetry, conformal covariance, trace- and divergence-freedom, are recovered as corollaries of the Chern-Simons invariant. We prove that the Cotton tensor is the obstruction to local conformal flatness in dimension $3$. Finally we discuss the link between Chern-Simons invariants, the eta invariant, and the central value of the Selberg zeta function. This is a survey paper without original results, "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1509.05156","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}