Related papers: A classical approach to TQFT's

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…

We give a presentation of the $n$-dimensional oriented cobordism category $\text{Cob}_n$ with generators corresponding to diffeomorphisms and surgeries along framed spheres, and a complete set of relations. Hence, given a functor $F$ from…

We give a finite presentation of the cobordism symmetric monoidal bicategory of (smooth, oriented) closed manifolds, cobordisms and cobordisms with corners as an extension of the bicategory of closed manifolds, cobordisms and…

Given a not necessarily semisimple modular tensor category C, we use the corresponding 3d TFT defined in [arXiv:1912.02063] to explicitly describe a modular functor as a symmetric monoidal 2-functor from a 2-category of oriented bordisms to…

We introduce a Heegaard-Floer homology functor from the category of oriented links in closed $3$-manifolds and oriented surface cobordisms in $4$-manifolds connecting them to the category of $\mathbb{F}[v]$-modules and…

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…

A 3-dimensional topological quantum field theory (TQFT) is a symmetric monoidal functor from the category of 3-cobordisms to the category of vector spaces. Such TQFTs provide in particular numerical invariants of closed 3-manifolds such as…

We describe a method to implement finite group global and gauged $q$-form symmetries into the axiomatic structure of $d$-dimensional Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT) in terms of bordisms decorated by cohomology classes. Namely, on a…

We construct and study a new family of TQFTs based on nilpotent highest weight representations of quantum sl(2) at a root of unity indexed by generic complex numbers. This extends to cobordisms the non-semi-simple invariants defined in…

We construct a certain `cobordism category' ${\cal D}$ whose morphisms are suitably decorated cobordism classes between similarly decorated closed oriented 1-manifolds, and show that there is essentially a bijection between…

We give a simple, geometric and explicit construction of 3d untwisted Dijkgraaf-Witten theory with defects of all codimensions. It is given as a symmetric monoidal functor from a defect cobordism category into the category of…

The notion of 2-framed three-manifolds is defined. The category of 2-framed cobordisms is described, and used to define a 2-framed three-dimensional TQFT. Using skeletonization and special features of this category, a small set of data and…

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…

The goal of this work is to describe a categorical formalism for (Extended) Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs) and present them as functors from a suitable category of cobordisms with corners to a linear category, generalizing 2d…

In this paper, we describe a relation between a categorical quantization construction, called "2-linearization", and extended topological quantum field theory (ETQFT). We then describe an extension of the 2-linearization process which…

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…

We show that a vector space valued TQFT constructed in work of De Renzi et al. [DGGPR23] extends naturally to a topological field theory which takes values in the symmetric monoidal category of linear cochains. Specifically, we consider a…

(Talk presented at the XVth Workshop on Geometric Methods in Physics, Quantizations, Deformations and Coherent States, in Bialowieza, Poland, July 1-7, 1996.) The aim of this article is to introduce some basic notions of Topological Quantum…

We combinatorially describe the $2$-category of singular cobordisms, called (rank one) foams, which governs the functorial version of Khovanov homology. As an application we topologically realize the type $\mathrm{D}$ arc algebra using this…

We introduce the notion of $n$-dimensional topological quantum field theory (TQFT) with defects as a symmetric monoidal functor on decorated stratified bordisms of dimension $n$. The familiar closed or open-closed TQFTs are special cases of…