Related papers: TQFTs do not detect the Milnor sphere

We show that there exist infinitely many pairs of non-homeomorphic closed oriented SOL torus bundles with the same quantum (TQFT) invariants. This follows from the arithmetic behind the conjugacy problem in $SL(2,\Z)$ and its congruence…

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…

Solitonic symmetry has been believed to follow the homotopy-group classification of topological solitons. Here, we point out a more sophisticated algebraic structure when solitons of different dimensions coexist in the spectrum. We uncover…

Homotopy Quantum Field Theories (HQFTs) were introduced by the second author to extend the ideas and methods of Topological Quantum Field Theories to closed $d$-manifolds endowed with extra structure in the form of homotopy classes of maps…

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…

The object of this paper is to define a subcategory of the category of 3-cobordisms to which invariants of rational homology 3-spheres should generalize. We specify the notion of Topological Quantum Field Theory (in the sense of Atiyah) to…

Implementing an idea due to John Baez and James Dolan we define new invariants of Whitney stratified manifolds by considering the homotopy theory of smooth transversal maps. To each Whitney stratified manifold we assign transversal homotopy…

We present some ideas for a possible Noncommutative Topological Quantum Field Theory (NCTQFT) and Noncommutative Floer Homology (NCFH). Our motivation is two-fold and it comes both from physics and mathematics: On the one hand we argue that…

We present a precise definition of extended homotopy quantum field theories and develop an orbifold construction for these theories when the target space is the classifying space of a finite group $G$, i.e. for $G$-equivariant topological…

We prove that semisimple 4-dimensional oriented topological field theories lead to stable diffeomorphism invariants and can therefore not distinguish homeomorphic closed oriented smooth 4-manifolds and homotopy equivalent simply connected…

We develop the general theory for the construction of Extended Topological Quantum Field Theories (ETQFTs) associated with the Costantino-Geer-Patureau quantum invariants of closed 3-manifolds. In order to do so, we introduce relative…

Homotopy Quantum Field Theories (HQFTs) generalize more familiar Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs). In generalization of the surgery construction of 3-dimensional TQFTs from modular categories, we use surgery to derive…

We construct infinitely many smooth oriented 4-manifolds containing pairs of homotopic, smoothly embedded 2-spheres that are not topologically isotopic, but that are equivalent by an ambient diffeomorphism inducing the identity on homology.…

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.

The cohomology theory known as Tmf, for "topological modular forms," is a universal object mapping out to elliptic cohomology theories, and its coefficient ring is closely connected to the classical ring of modular forms. We extend this to…

We give an introduction for the non-expert to TQFT (Topological Quantum Field Theory), focussing especially on its role in algebraic topology. We compare the Atiyah axioms for TQFT with the Eilenberg Steenrod axioms for homology, give a few…

Dynamical quantum field theories (QFTs), such as those in which spacetimes are equipped with a metric and/or a field in the form of a smooth map to a target manifold, can be formulated axiomatically using the language of…

We will give a geometric description of the nth transversal homotopy monoid of k-dimensional complex projective space, where we stratify by lower dimensional complex projective spaces in the usual way. Transversal homotopy monoids are…

Finite-order invariants of knots in arbitrary 3-manifolds (including non-orientable ones) are constructed and studied by methods of the topology of discriminant sets. Obstructions to the integrability of admissible weight systems to…

We find multipullback quantum odd-dimensional spheres equipped with natural $U(1)$-actions that yield the multipullback quantum complex projective spaces constructed from Toeplitz cubes as noncommutative quotients. We prove that the…