Related papers: Open-closed strings: Two-dimensional extended TQFT…
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…
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…
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…
We present a state sum construction of two-dimensional extended Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs), so-called open-closed TQFTs, which generalizes the state sum of Fukuma--Hosono--Kawai from triangulations of conventional…
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…
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…
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…
For any symmetric monoidal category $\mathcal{D}$, Lauda and Pfeiffer showed the equivalence between the $\mathcal{D}$-valued open-closed 2-dimensional TQFTs and the so-called knowledgeable Frobenius algebras (KFAs) in $\mathcal{D}$. Each…
To open-closed cobordism surfaces, open-closed string topology associates topological quantum field theory (TQFT) operations, namely string operations, which depend only on homeomorphism types of surfaces and which satisfy the sewing…
This paper is devoted to the study of algebraic structures leading to link homology theories. The originally used structures of Frobenius algebra and/or TQFT are modified in two directions. First, we refine 2-dimensional cobordisms by…
These notes offer an introduction to the functorial and algebraic description of 2-dimensional topological quantum field theories `with defects', assuming only superficial familiarity with closed TQFTs in terms of commutative Frobenius…
It is well-known that classical two-dimensional topological field theories are in one-to-one correspondence with commutative Frobenius algebras. An important extension of classical two-dimensional topological field theories is provided by…
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…
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…
We use a special kind of 2-dimensional extended Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs), so-called open-closed TQFTs, in order to extend Khovanov homology from links to arbitrary tangles, not necessarily even. For every plane diagram of…
We construct extended TQFTs associated to Rozansky--Witten models with target manifolds $T^*\mathbb{C}^n$. The starting point of the construction is the 3-category whose objects are such Rozansky--Witten models, and whose morphisms are…
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…
In this paper we study the topology of the cobordism category of open and closed strings. This is a 2-category in which the objects are compact one-manifolds whose boundary components are labeled by an indexing set (the set of "D-branes"),…
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…