English

Universal property of graph cobordisms

Algebraic Topology 2026-01-08 v1

Abstract

We exhibit the symmetric monoidal \infty-category GrCob\mathrm{GrCob} of graph cobordisms between spaces as a full \infty-subcategory of the \infty-category Psh(Gr)\mathrm{Psh}(\mathrm{Gr}) of presheaves over Gr\mathrm{Gr}, where Gr\mathrm{Gr} is the symmetric monoidal \infty-category of graph cobordisms between finite sets. We also describe a universal property for GrCob\mathrm{GrCob}: it is, in a suitable sense, the free symmetric monoidal extension of Gr\mathrm{Gr} endowed with the factorization homology X\int_X* of the universal E\mathbf{E}_\infty-Frobenius algebra for all spaces XX. As a corollary, we identify the space of universal natural operations on the factorization homologies, in particular the Hochschild homology, of E\mathbf{E}_\infty-Frobenius algebras.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.03766,
  title  = {Universal property of graph cobordisms},
  author = {Andrea Bianchi and Adela Yiyu Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.03766},
  year   = {2026}
}

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