English

Combinatorial Cobordism Theory

Mathematical Physics 2022-04-15 v2 math.MP

Abstract

We introduce a formalism based on a combinatorial notion of cell complex subject to an inclusion-reversing duality operation. Our main goal is to open the way for a functorial definition of field theories in a context where no manifold or topological structure is assumed. This is achieved via a discrete notion of cobordism for which a composition operation is defined. Our main theorem enables the composition of cobordisms by showing that certain sequences of maps between cell complexes are in bijective correspondence with a cell complex of dimension one higher. As a result we obtain a category whose morphisms are cobordisms having a causal structure generalizing that of Causal Dynamical Triangulations as well as dualities inherited from the duality map defined on cell complexes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2202.13722,
  title  = {Combinatorial Cobordism Theory},
  author = {Maxime Savoy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.13722},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

83 pages, 15 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2201.12846

R2 v1 2026-06-24T09:56:10.638Z