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This thesis contains various results on unitary 2-representations of finite groups and their 2-characters, as well as on pivotal structures for fusion categories. The motivation is extended topological quantum field theory (TQFT), where the…
Based on Morse theory for the energy functional on path spaces we develop a deformation theory for mapping spaces of spheres into orthogonal groups. This is used to show that these mapping spaces are weakly homotopy equivalent, in a stable…
We compute the classifying space of the surface category $h\mathrm{Bord}_2$ whose objects are closed oriented $1$-manifolds and whose morphisms are diffeomorphism classes of oriented surface bordisms, and show that it is rationally…
This paper deals with the homotopy theory of differential graded operads. We endow the Koszul dual category of curved conilpotent cooperads, where the notion of quasi-isomorphism barely makes sense, with a model category structure Quillen…
We initiate a systematic study of 3-dimensional `defect' topological quantum field theories, that we introduce as symmetric monoidal functors on stratified and decorated bordisms. For every such functor we construct a tricategory with…
After two papers on weak cubical categories and {\it collarable} cospans, respectively, we put things together and construct a {\it weak} cubical category of cubical {\it collared} cospans of topological spaces. We also build a second…
We survey the cohomology jumping loci and the Alexander-type invariants associated to a space, or to its fundamental group. Though most of the material is expository, we provide new examples and applications, which in turn raise several…
We show that Turaev's group-coalgebras and Hopf group-coalgebras are coalgebras and Hopf algebras in a symmetric monoidal category, which we call the Turaev category. A similar result holds for group-algebras and Hopf group-algebras. As an…
Inspired by Segal-Stolz-Teichner project for geometric construction of elliptic (tmf) cohomology, and ideas of Floer theory and of Hopkins-Lurie on extended TFT's, we geometrically construct some $Ring$-valued representable cofunctors on…
The notion of conformal algebras was introduced by Victor G. Kac using the axiomatic description of the operator product expansion of chiral fields in conformal field theory. The structure theory, representations and cohomology of Lie and…
A covariant functor from the category of mapping tori to a category of AF-algebras is constructed; the functor takes continuous maps between such manifolds to stable homomorphisms between the corresponding AF-algebras. We use this functor…
We investigate the logarithmic bundles associated to arrangements of hypersurfaces with a fixed degree in a smooth projective variety. We then specialize to the case when the variety is a quadric hypersurface and a multiprojective space to…
The notion of the \emph{homotopy type} of a topological stack has been around in the literature for some time. The basic idea is that an atlas $X \to \mathfrak{X}$ of a stack determines a topological groupoid $\mathbb{X}$ with object space…
We construct a version of Dijkgraaf-Witten theory based on a compact abelian Lie group within the formalism of Turaev's homotopy quantum field theory. As an application we show that the 2+1-dimensional theory based on U(1) classifies lens…
Let $M$ be a monoid and $G:\mathbf{Mon} \to \mathbf{Grp}$ be the group completion functor from monoids to groups. Given a collection $\mathcal{X}$ of submonoids of $M$ and for each $N\in \mathcal{X}$ a collection $\mathcal{Y}_N$ of…
We examine the topology of various spaces of locally homogeneous affine manifolds which arise from the classification result of Opozda [B. Opozda, A classification of locally homogeneous connections on 2-dimensional manifolds, Differential…
We construct a class of quantum field theories depending on the data of a holomorphic Poisson structure on a piece of the underlying spacetime. The main technical tool relies on a characterization of deformations and anomalies of such…
We obtain a complete classification of hypercomplex manifolds, on which a compact group of automorphisms acts transitively. The description of the spaces as well as the proofs of our results use only the structure theory of reductive…
Lada introduced strong homotopy algebras to describe the structures on a deformation retract of an algebra in topological spaces. However, there is no satisfactory general definition of a morphism of strong homotopy (s.h.) algebras. Given a…
We give a homotopy theoretic characterization of stacks on a site $\cC$ as the {\it homotopy sheaves} of groupoids on $\cC$. We use this characterization to construct a model category in which stacks are the fibrant objects. We compare…