English

Topological quantum field theories and homotopy cobordisms

Mathematical Physics 2022-09-01 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory Algebraic Topology Category Theory math.MP Representation Theory

Abstract

We construct a category HomCob\mathrm{HomCob} whose objects are {\it homotopically 1-finitely generated} topological spaces, and whose morphisms are {\it cofibrant cospans}. Given a manifold submanifold pair (M,A)(M,A), we prove that there exists functors into HomCob\mathrm{HomCob} from the full subgroupoid of the mapping class groupoid MCGMA\mathrm{MCG}_{M}^{A}, and from the full subgroupoid of the motion groupoid MotMA\mathrm{Mot}_{M}^{A}, whose objects are homotopically 1-finitely generated. We also construct a family of functors ZG ⁣:HomCobVect\mathsf{Z}_G\colon \mathrm{HomCob}\to \mathbf{Vect}, one for each finite group GG. These generalise topological quantum field theories previously constructed by Yetter, and an untwisted version of Dijkgraaf-Witten. Given a space XX, we prove that ZG(X)\mathsf{Z}_G(X) can be expressed as the C\mathbb{C}-vector space with basis natural transformation classes of maps {π(X,X0)G}\{\pi(X,X_0)\to G\} for some finite representative set of points X0XX_0\subset X, demonstrating that ZG\mathsf{Z}_G is explicitly calculable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.14504,
  title  = {Topological quantum field theories and homotopy cobordisms},
  author = {Fiona Torzewska},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.14504},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

76 pages, 7 figures