Related papers: Higher-dimensional Algebra and Topological Quantum…
Homotopy Quantum Field Theories as variants of Topological Quantum Field Theories are described by functors from some cobordism category, enriched with homotopical data, to a symmetric monoidal category $\mathcal{V}$. A new notion of HQFTs…
I review some recent results on four-manifold invariants which have been obtained in the context of topological quantum field theory. I focus on three different aspects: (a) the computation of correlation functions, which give explicit…
In [arXiv:1912.02063], we constructed 3-dimensional Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs) using not necessarily semisimple modular categories. Here, we study projective representations of mapping class groups of surfaces defined by…
Short-range entangled topological phases of matter are closely connected to Topological Quantum Field Theory. We use this connection to classify bosonic Symmetry Protected Topological Phases in low dimensions, including the case when the…
This paper explores 1-dimensional topological quantum field theories. We separately deal with strict and strong 1-dimensional topological quantum field theories. The strict one is regarded as a symmetric monoidal functor between the…
We axiomatize the extended operators in topological orders (possibly gravitationally anomalous, possibly with degenerate ground states) in terms of monoidal Karoubi-complete $n$-categories which are mildly dualizable and have trivial…
This note is intended as an introduction to the functorial formulation of quantum field theories with defects. After some remarks about models in general dimension, we restrict ourselves to two dimensions - the lowest dimension in which…
Group field theory is a background-independent approach to quantum gravity whose starting point is the definition of a quantum field theory on an auxiliary group manifold (not interpreted as spacetime, but rather as the finite-dimensional…
The physics of quantum gravity is discussed within the framework of topological quantum field theory. Some of the principles are illustrated with examples taken from theories in which space-time is three dimensional.
In this paper, we study the $G$-representation and character varieties of non-orientable closed surfaces. By means of a geometric method based on a Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT), we compute the virtual classes of these varieties…
We use geometric ideas coming from certain classic algebraic constructions to associate, to every classical field theory, a symmetric monoidal double functor from the double category of cobordisms with corners to a certain symmetric…
These third-year lecture notes are designed for a 1-semester course in topological quantum field theory (TQFT). Assumed background in mathematics and physics are only standard second-year subjects: multivariable calculus, introduction to…
Quantum gravity is studied nonperturbatively in the case in which space has a boundary with finite area. A natural set of boundary conditions is studied in the Euclidean signature theory, in which the pullback of the curvature to the…
This thesis is broadly split into two parts. In the first part, simple state sum models for minimally coupled fermion and scalar fields are constructed on a $1$-manifold. The models are independent of the triangulation and give the same…
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…
Quantum Field Theory (QFT) represents a vast generalization of Quantum Mechanics (QM), as it deals with systems that have an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The Stone-von Neumann theorem, which establishes the equivalence of…
We consider coupling an ordinary quantum field theory with an infinite number of degrees of freedom to a topological field theory. On R^d the new theory differs from the original one by the spectrum of operators. Sometimes the local…
Symmetry-protected topological phases (SPT) are short-range entangled gapped states protected by global symmetry. Nontrivial SPT phases cannot be adiabatically connected to the trivial disordered state(or atomic insulator) as long as…
These notes review a description of quantum mechanics in terms of the topology of spaces, basing on the axioms of Topological Quantum Field Theory and path integral formalism. In this description quantum states and operators are encoded by…
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…