Refined Chern-Simons versus Vogel universality

Understand

We study the relation between the partition function of refined SU(N) and SO(2N) Chern-Simons on the 3-sphere and the universal Chern-Simons partition function in the sense of Mkrtchyan and Veselov.

• We find a four-parameter generalization of the integral representation of universal Chern-Simons that includes refined SU(N) and SO(2N) Chern-Simons for special values of parameters.
• The large N expansion of the integral representation of refined SU(N) Chern-Simons explicitly shows the replacement of the virtual Euler characteristic of the moduli space of complex curves with a refined Euler characteristic related to the radius deformed c=1 string free energy.