  As noted long ago by Atiyah and Bott, the classical Yang-Mills action on a
Riemann surface admits a beautiful symplectic interpretation as the norm-square
of a moment map associated to the Hamiltonian action by gauge transformations
on the affine space of connections. Here I explain how certain Wilson loop
observables in Chern-Simons gauge theory on a Seifert three-manifold can be
given an analogous symplectic description. Among other results, this symplectic
description implies that the stationary-phase approximation to the Wilson loop
path integral is exact for torus knots, an empirical observation made
previously by Lawrence and Rozansky. This article reviews selected material
from the larger work "Localization for Wilson Loops in Chern-Simons Theory,"
arXiv:0911.2687.
