Finite Temperature Chern-Simons Coefficient

Abstract

We compute the exact finite temperature effective action in a $(0+1)$-dimensional field theory containing a topological Chern-Simons term, which has many features in common with $(2+1)$-dimensional Chern-Simons theories. This exact result explains the origin and meaning of puzzling temperature dependent coefficients found in various naive perturbative computations in the higher dimensional models.