Related papers: Lectures on invertible field theories
Cobordism categories have played an important role in classical geometry and more recently in mathematical treatments of quantum field theory. Here we will compute localisations of two-dimensional discrete cobordism categories. This allows…
A $d$-dimensional invertible topological field theory is a functor from the symmetric monoidal $(\infty,n)$-category of $d$-bordisms (embedded into $\mathbb{R}^\infty$ and equipped with a tangential $(X,\xi)$-structure) which lands in the…
These lecture notes form an expanded account of a course given at the Summer School on Topology and Field Theories held at the Center for Mathematics at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana during the Summer of 2012. A similar lecture…
We construct spaces of 1-dimensional supersymmetric Euclidean field theories and show that they represent real or complex K-theory. A noteworthy feature of our bordism category is that the identity bordism of a point is connected to…
In this expository paper we introduce extended topological quantum field theories and the cobordism hypothesis.
These notes offer a lightening introduction to topological quantum field theory in its functorial axiomatisation, assuming no or little prior exposure. We lay some emphasis on the connection between the path integral motivation and the…
A group-category is an additively semisimple category with a monoidal product structure in which the simple objects are invertible. For example in the category of representations of a group, 1-dimensional representations are the invertible…
This is a report on aspects of the theory and use of monoidal categories. The first section introduces the main concepts through the example of the category of vector spaces. String notation is explained and shown to lead naturally to a…
In the realm of invertible symmetry, the topological approach based on classifying spaces dominates the classification of 't Hooft anomalies and symmetry protected topological phases. We explore the alternative algebraic approach based on…
This lecture series is based on joint work in progress with Shaul Barkan, as well as work in progress of the author. The five sections of these notes correspond to the five lectures, but more details have been added. $2$-dimensional…
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…
We provide a complete generators and relations presentation of the 2-dimensional extended unoriented and oriented bordism bicategories as symmetric monoidal bicategories. Thereby we classify these types of 2-dimensional extended topological…
The inclusion of the unit in a braided tensor category $\mathcal{V}$ induces a 1-morphism in the Morita 4-category of braided tensor categories $BrTens$. We give criteria for the dualizability of this morphism. When $\mathcal{V}$ is a…
In this paper we introduce an open-closed cobordism category with maps to a background space. We identify the classifying space of this category for certain classes of background space. The key ingredient is the homology stability of…
This article aims to provide a novel formalization of the concept of computational irreducibility in terms of the exactness of functorial correspondence between a category of data structures and elementary computations and a corresponding…
A generalized-homology bordism-theory is constructed, such that for certain manifold homotopy stratified sets (MHSS; Quinn-spaces) homeomorphism-invariant geometric fundamental-classes exist. The construction combines three ideas: Firstly,…
We argue that any proposed quantum theory of gravity with non-trivial cobordism classes in the space of configurations belongs to the Swampland. The argument is based on the assumption that there are no global symmetries in a consistent…
We show how the framework of crossed simplicial groups may be used to provide a classification of topological field theories on open cobordism categories defined by reductions of the structure group to a planar Lie group. Such theories are…
These are notes from an informal mini-course on factorization homology, infinity-categories, and topological field theories. The target audience was imagined to be graduate students who are not homotopy theorists.
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…