English

Boundary Conditions for Topological Quantum Field Theories, Anomalies and Projective Modular Functors

Quantum Algebra 2015-05-20 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Category Theory

Abstract

We study boundary conditions for extended topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) and their relation to topological anomalies. We introduce the notion of TQFTs with moduli level mm, and describe extended anomalous theories as natural transformations of invertible field theories of this type. We show how in such a framework anomalous theories give rise naturally to homotopy fixed points for nn-characters on \infty-groups. By using dimensional reduction on manifolds with boundaries, we show how boundary conditions for n+1n+1-dimensional TQFTs produce nn-dimensional anomalous field theories. Finally, we analyse the case of fully extended TQFTs, and show that any fully extended anomalous theory produces a suitable boundary condition for the anomaly field theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.5723,
  title  = {Boundary Conditions for Topological Quantum Field Theories, Anomalies and Projective Modular Functors},
  author = {Domenico Fiorenza and Alessandro Valentino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.5723},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

26 pages, 6 figures. Exposition improved, bibliography updated. Final version, to appear in Comm. Math. Phys