Open 2D TFTs admit initial open-closed extensions
Abstract
We show that any open 2-dimensional topological field theory valued in a symmetric monoidal -category (with suitable colimits) extends canonically to an open-closed field theory whose value at the circle is the Hochschild homology object of its value at the disk. As a corollary, we obtain an action of the moduli spaces of surfaces on the Hochschild homology object of -Calabi-Yau algebras. This provides a space level refinement of previous work of Costello over and Wahl-Westerland and Wahl over , and serves as a crucial ingredient to Lurie's "non-compact cobordism hypothesis" in dimension 2. As part of the proof we also give a description of slice categories of the d-dimensional bordism category with boundary, which may be of independent interest.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.02553,
title = {Open 2D TFTs admit initial open-closed extensions},
author = {Shaul Barkan and Jan Steinebrunner and Adela YiYu Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.02553},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
45 pages (37 plus appendix), 12 figures. v2: added references and other improvements to introduction