Related papers: Introductory lectures on topological quantum field…
Mostly self-contained script on functorial topological quantum field theories. These notes give a slow introduction to the basic notions of category theory which serve a closer investigation of cobordisms and (commutative) Frobenius…
(Talk presented at the XVth Workshop on Geometric Methods in Physics, Quantizations, Deformations and Coherent States, in Bialowieza, Poland, July 1-7, 1996.) The aim of this article is to introduce some basic notions of Topological Quantum…
We use geometric ideas coming from certain classic algebraic constructions to associate, to every classical field theory, a symmetric monoidal double functor from the double category of cobordisms with corners to a certain symmetric…
Topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) are symmetric monoidal functors out of cobordism categories. In dimension two, oriented TQFTs are famously classified by commutative Frobenius algebras. In the unoriented setting, the…
In this paper we propose a naive construction of 2-dimensional extended topological quantum field theories (TQFTs), which can be further generalized to the higher-dimension extended TQFTs.
This thesis provides an introduction to the various category theory ideas employed in topological quantum field theory. These theories are viewed as symmetric monoidal functors from topological cobordism categories into the category of…
Even the uninitiated will know that Quantum Field Theory cannot be introduced systematically in just four lectures. I try to give a reasonably connected outline of part of it, from second quantization to the path-integral technique in…
These third-year lecture notes are designed for a 1-semester course in topological quantum field theory (TQFT). Assumed background in mathematics and physics are only standard second-year subjects: multivariable calculus, introduction to…
The study of topological quantum field theories increasingly relies upon concepts from higher-dimensional algebra such as n-categories and n-vector spaces. We review progress towards a definition of n-category suited for this purpose, and…
We construct a Topological Quantum Field Theory (in the sense of Atiyah) associated to the universal finite-type invariant of 3-dimensional manifolds, as a functor from the category of 3-dimensional manifolds with parametrized boundary,…
We introduce a framework for internal topological symmetries in quantum field theory, including "noninvertible symmetries" and "categorical symmetries". This leads to a calculus of topological defects which takes full advantage of…
We study the path integral quantization of the topological 3BF theory, whose gauge symmetry is described by a 3-group. This theory is relevant for the quantization of general relativity coupled to Standard Model of elementary particles. We…
Topological qauntum field theory(TQFT) is a very powerful theoretical tool to study topological phases and phase transitions. In $2+1$D, it is well known that the Chern-Simons theory captures all the universal topological data of…
The goal of this work is to describe a categorical formalism for (Extended) Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs) and present them as functors from a suitable category of cobordisms with corners to a linear category, generalizing 2d…
This is an invited contribution to the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics. We give an overview of 3-dimensional topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) and the corresponding quantum invariants of 3-manifolds. We…
The aim of this paper is to survey some aspects of mapping class groups with focus on their finite dimensional representations arising in topological quantum field theory.
A classical result in quantum topology is that oriented 2-dimensional topological quantum field theories (2-TQFTs) are fully classified by commutative Frobenius algebras. In 2006, Turaev and Turner introduced additional structure on…
We present some ideas for a possible Noncommutative Floer Homology. The geometric motivation comes from an attempt to build a theory which applies to practically every 3-manifold (closed, oriented and connected) and not only to homology…
A topological quantum field theory is introduced which reproduces the Seiberg-Witten invariants of four-manifolds. Dimensional reduction of this topological field theory leads to a new one in three dimensions. Its partition function yields…
We apply the idea of a topological quantum field theory (TQFT) to maps from manifolds into topological spaces. This leads to a notion of a (d+1)-dimensional homotopy quantum field theory (HQFT) which may be described as a TQFT for closed…