Is Crane--Yetter fully extended?
Abstract
We revisit the question of whether the Crane-Yetter topological quantum field theory (TQFT) associated to a modular tensor category admits a fully extended refinement. More specifically, we use tools from stable homotopy theory to classify extensions of invertible four-dimensional TQFTs to theories valued in symmetric monoidal 4-categories whose Picard spectrum has nontrivial homotopy only in degrees 0 and 4. We show that such extensions are classified by two pieces of data: an equivalence class of an invertible object in the target and a sixth root of unity. Applying this result to the 4-category of braided fusion categories, we find that there are infinitely many equivalence classes of fully extended invertible TQFTs reproducing the Crane-Yetter partition function on top-dimensional manifolds, parametrized by a -extension of the Witt group of nondegenerate braided fusion categories. This analysis clarifies common claims in the literature and raises the question of how to naturally pick out the -fixed point data on the framed TQFT which assigns the input braided fusion category to the point so that it selects the Crane-Yetter state-sum.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.04864,
title = {Is Crane--Yetter fully extended?},
author = {Luuk Stehouwer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.04864},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
19 pages