Related papers: The surface category and tropical curves

The homotopy category of the bordism category $hBord_d$ has as objects closed oriented $(d-1)$-manifolds and as morphisms diffeomorphism classes of $d$-dimensional bordisms. Using a new fiber sequence for bordism categories, we compute the…

Let $\mathcal{A}_{g,d}$ be the (topological) cobordism category of orientable surfaces whose connected components are homeomorphic to either $S^1 \times I$ with one incoming and one outgoing boundary component or the surface $\Sigma_{g,d}$…

We consider the topological category of $h$-cobordisms between manifolds with boundary and compare its homotopy type with the standard $h$-cobordism space of a compact smooth manifold.

In this paper we study the topology of the cobordism category of open and closed strings. This is a 2-category in which the objects are compact one-manifolds whose boundary components are labeled by an indexing set (the set of "D-branes"),…

We define the notion of a hierarchically cocompact classifying space for a family of subgroups of a group. Our main application is to show that the mapping class group $\mbox{Mod}(S)$ of any connected oriented compact surface $S$, possibly…

In this paper we study the topology of cobordism categories of manifolds with corners. Specifically, if {Cob}_{d,<k>} is the category whose objets are a fixed dimension d, with corners of codimension less than or equal to k, then we…

Given a finite modular tensor category, we associate with each compact surface with boundary a cochain complex in such a way that the mapping class group of the surface acts projectively on its cohomology groups. In degree zero, this action…

For a given list of closed manifolds $\Sigma_k=(P_1,...,P_k)$, we construct a cobordism category $\mathbf{Cob}_{d}^{\Sigma_{k}}$ of embedded manifolds with Baas-Sullivan singularities of type $\Sigma_k$. Our main results identify the…

We prove an h-principle with boundary condition for a certain class of topological spaces valued sheaves. The techniques used in the proof come from the study of the homotopy type of the cobordism categories, and they are of simplicial and…

We prove that many spaces of positive scalar curvature metrics have the homotopy type of infinite loop spaces. Our result in particular applies to the path component of the round metric inside $\mathcal{R}^+ (S^d)$ if $d \geq 6$. To achieve…

We define a cobordism category of topological manifolds and prove that if $d \neq 4$ its classifying space is weakly equivalent to $\Omega^{\infty -1} MTTop(d)$, where $MTTop(d)$ is the Thom spectrum of the inverse of the canonical bundle…

Let $\Gamma$ be a finite-index subgroup of the mapping class group of a closed genus $g$ surface that contains the Torelli group. For instance, $\Gamma$ can be the level $L$ subgroup or the spin mapping class group. We show that…

We formulate a tropical analogue of Grothendieck's section conjecture: that for every stable graph G of genus g>2, and every field k, the generic curve with reduction type G over k satisfies the section conjecture. We prove many cases of…

Given an oriented surface of positive genus with finitely many punctures, we classify the finite orbits of the mapping class group action on the moduli space of semisimple complex special linear two dimensional representations of the…

Let G be a compact Lie group. By work of Chataur and Menichi, the homology of the space of free loops in the classifying space of G is known to be the value on the circle in a homological conformal field theory. This means in particular…

On negatively curved compact manifolds, it is possible to associate to every closed form a bounded cocycle - hence a bounded cohomology class - via integration over straight simplices. The kernel of this map is contained in the space of…

We study categories of d-dimensional cobordisms from the perspective of Tillmann and Galatius-Madsen-Tillmann-Weiss. There is a category $C_\theta$ of closed smooth (d-1)-manifolds and smooth d-dimensional cobordisms, equipped with…

We construct a rational homotopy-theoretic model for a classifying space of locally conformally symplectic structures on four-manifolds, and use it to definition a cobordism category of three-manifolds `anchored' by principal $\Omega^2 S^2$…

Let $g$ be a non-negative integer, $\Sigma _g$ a closed orientable surface of genus $g$, and $\mathcal{M}_g$ its mapping class group. We classify all the group homomorphisms $\pi _1(\Sigma _g)\to G$ up to the action of $\mathcal{M}_g$ on…

For a finite group $G$, we define the $G$-cobordism category in dimension two. We show there is a one-to-one correspondence between the connected components of its classifying space and the abelianization of $G$. Also, we find an…