English

The geometric cobordism hypothesis

Algebraic Topology 2022-06-22 v3 Mathematical Physics Category Theory math.MP Quantum Algebra

Abstract

We prove a generalization of the cobordism hypothesis of Baez--Dolan and Hopkins--Lurie for bordisms with arbitrary geometric structures, such as Riemannian metrics, complex and symplectic structures, principal bundles with connections, or geometric string structures. Our methods rely on the locality property for fully extended functorial field theories established in arXiv:2011.01208, reducing the problem to the special case of geometrically framed bordism categories. As an application, we upgrade the classification of invertible fully extended topological field theories by B\"okstedt--Madsen and Schommer-Pries to nontopological field theories, generalizing the work of Galatius--Madsen--Tillmann--Weiss to arbitrary geometric structures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2111.01095,
  title  = {The geometric cobordism hypothesis},
  author = {Daniel Grady and Dmitri Pavlov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.01095},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

64 pages. Comments and questions are welcome. See also arXiv:2011.01208 for background material. v2: Added Section 6 with examples. v3: Added more diagrams and explanations in Section 4.2

R2 v1 2026-06-24T07:21:22.933Z