English

Extended field theories are local and have classifying spaces

Algebraic Topology 2023-09-19 v4 Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Algebra

Abstract

We show that all extended functorial field theories, both topological and nontopological, are local. We define the smooth (infinity,d)-category of bordisms with geometric data, such as Riemannian metrics or geometric string structures, and prove that it satisfies codescent with respect to the target S, which implies the locality property. We apply this result to construct a classifying space for concordance classes of functorial field theories with geometric data, solving a conjecture of Stolz and Teichner about the existence of such a space. We use our classifying space construction to develop a geometric theory of power operations, following the recent work of Barthel, Berwick-Evans, and Stapleton.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2011.01208,
  title  = {Extended field theories are local and have classifying spaces},
  author = {Daniel Grady and Dmitri Pavlov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.01208},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

63 pages. Comments and questions are welcome. v2: Rewrote Section 7. v3: Added Definition 4.2.5. v4: Major revision incorporating feedback from referee reports

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:51:35.522Z