Related papers: Defining extended TQFTs via handle attachments
We give an alternative presentation of braided monoidal categories. Instead of the usual associativity and braiding we have just one constraint (the b-structure). In the unital case, the coherence conditions for a b-structure are shown to…
Twists of four-dimensional supersymmetric quantum field theories (SQFTs) isolate protected sectors with rich algebraic structures. We develop a unified framework for analyzing symmetries and anomalies in four-dimensional holomorphically…
We prove the uniqueness, up to diffeomorphism, of symplectically aspherical fillings of the unit cotangent bundle of odd-dimensional spheres. As applications, we first show the non-existence of exact symplectic cobordisms between some…
We construct a functorial pushforward homomorphism in geometric Hodge filtered complex cobordism along proper holomorphic maps between arbitrary complex manifolds. This significantly improves previous results on such transfer maps and is a…
An equivariant topological field theory is defined on a cobordism category of manifolds with principal fiber bundles for a fixed (finite) structure group. We provide a geometric construction which for any given morphism $G \to H$ of finite…
An equivalent description of a symmetric monoidal category is introduced in which, instead of separate associator and commutator isomorphisms satisfying the usual coherence axioms, we simply have associo-commutator isomorphisms satisfying…
If $C$ is a spherical fusion category, the string-net construction associates to each closed oriented surface $\Sigma$ the vector space $Z_\text{SN}(\Sigma)$ of linear combinations of $C$-labelled graphs on $\Sigma$ modulo local relations,…
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…
Orbifolds of two-dimensional quantum field theories have a natural formulation in terms of defects or domain walls. This perspective allows for a rich generalisation of the orbifolding procedure, which we study in detail for the case of…
We call a closed, connected, orientable manifold in one of the categories TOP, PL or DIFF chiral if it does not admit an orientation-reversing automorphism and amphicheiral otherwise. Moreover, we call a manifold strongly chiral if it does…
Indexed symmetric monoidal categories are an important refinement of bicategories -- this structure underlies several familiar bicategories, including the homotopy bicategory of parametrized spectra, and its equivariant and fiberwise…
We obtain complete geometric invariants of cobordism classes of oriented simple fold maps of (n+1)-dimensional manifolds into an n-dimensional manifold N in terms of immersions with prescribed normal bundles. We compute that this cobordism…
Given a symplectic manifold M, we consider a category with objects finite ordered families of Lagrangian submanifolds of M (subject to certain additional constraints) and with morphisms Lagrangian cobordisms relating them. We construct a…
Any finite state automaton gives rise to a Boolean one-dimensional TQFT with defects and inner endpoints of cobordisms. This paper extends the correspondence to Boolean TQFTs where defects accumulate toward inner endpoints, relating such…
We give a filtration of the unoriented cobordism ring using the infinite symplectic group, with polynomial generators given one at a time. The generating manifolds are also constructed using the cup construction.
Given two four-dimensional symplectic manifolds, together with knots in their boundaries, we define an ``anchored symplectic embedding'' to be a symplectic embedding, together with a two-dimensional symplectic cobordism between the knots…
We survey some recent results concerning the so called Categorical Torelli problem. This is to say how one can reconstruct a smooth projective variety up to isomorphism, by using the homological properties of special admissible…
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…
There are a least uncountably many diffeomorphism types for open manifolds. Hence the classification problem is extremely difficult. We proceed as follows: We define several uniform structures of proper metric spaces and consider their arc…
Symmetry is a powerful tool for studying dynamics in QFT: it provides selection rules, constrains RG flows, and often simplifies analysis. Currently, our understanding is that the most general form of symmetry is described by categorical…