Related papers: Coherent span-valued 2D TQFTs

In previous work by the first two authors, Frobenius and commutative algebra objects in the category of spans of sets were characterized in terms of simplicial sets satisfying certain properties. In this paper, we find a similar…

We show that the canonical equivalences of categories between 2-dimensional (unoriented) topological quantum field theories valued in a symmetric monoidal category and (extended) commutative Frobenius algebras in that symmetric monoidal…

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…

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…

We introduce the category of singular 2-dimensional cobordisms and show that it admits a completely algebraic description as the free symmetric monoidal category on a twin Frobenius algebra, by providing a description of this category in…

In this paper we explain the relationship between Frobenius objects in monoidal categories and adjunctions in 2-categories. In particular, we show that every Frobenius object in a monoidal category M arises from an ambijunction…

Two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) can be defined through its correlation functions. These must satisfy certain consistency conditions which arise from the cutting of world sheets along circles or intervals. The construction of a…

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…

In this survey article, we give an introduction to the notion of a 2-Segal set and prove that 2-Segal sets are equivalent to pseudomonoids in the bicategory of spans. The proof utilizes graphical techniques for 2-Segal sets and spans that…

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 study a special sort of 2-dimensional extended Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs) which we call open-closed TQFTs. These are defined on open-closed cobordisms by which we mean smooth compact oriented 2-manifolds with corners that…

We define the notions of unital/counital/biunital infinitesimal anti-symmetric bialgebras and coFrobenius bialgebras and discuss their algebraic properties. We also define the notion of a graded 2D open-closed TQFT. These structures arise…

We prove that the free algebra functor associated to a symmetric, pseudo commutative 2-monad, from the underlying symmetric monoidal 2-category to the 2-category of algebras and pseudo maps over the 2-monad can be enhanced to a…

This paper develops a concept of 2-categorical algebraic quantum field theories (2AQFTs) that assign locally presentable linear categories to spacetimes. It is proven that ordinary AQFTs embed as a coreflective full 2-subcategory into the…

In this paper, we examine Atiyah's Hermitian axiom for two-dimensional complex topological quantum field theories. Building on the correspondence between 2D TQFTs and Frobenius algebras, we find the algebraic objects corresponding to…

Motivated by the Moore-Segal axioms for an open-closed topological field theory, we consider planar open string topological field theories. We rigorously define a category 2Thick whose objects and morphisms can be thought of as open strings…

A modular tensor category provides the appropriate data for the construction of a three-dimensional topological field theory. We describe the following analogue for two-dimensional conformal field theories: a 2-category whose objects are…

We explicitly show that symmetric Frobenius structures on a finite-dimensional, semi-simple algebra stand in bijection to homotopy fixed points of the trivial SO(2)-action on the bicategory of finite-dimensional, semi-simple algebras,…

We construct higher categories of iterated spans, possibly equipped with extra structure in the form of "local systems", and classify their fully dualizable objects. By the Cobordism Hypothesis, these give rise to framed topological quantum…

For a positive integer r, an r-spin topological quantum field theory is a 2-dimensional TQFT with tangential structure given by the r-fold cover of SO_2 . In particular, such a TQFT assigns a scalar invariant to every closed r-spin surface…