We consider Blanchet, Habegger, Masbaum and Vogel's universal construction of topological theories in dimension two, using it to produce interesting theories that do not satisfy the usual two-dimensional TQFT axioms. Kronecker's characterization of rational functions allows us to classify theories over a field with finite-dimensional state spaces and introduce their extension to theories with the ground ring the product of rings of symmetric functions in N and M variables. We look at several examples of non-multiplicative theories and see Hankel matrices, Schur and supersymmetric Schur polynomials quickly emerge from these structures. The last section explains how an extension of the Robert-Wagner foam evaluation to overlapping foams gives the Sergeev-Pragacz formula for the supersymmetric Schur polynomials and the Day formula for the Toeplitz determinant of rational power series as special cases.
We study the Gram determinant and construct bases of hom spaces for the one-dimensional topological theory of decorated unoriented one-dimensional cobordisms, as recently defined by Khovanov, when the pair of generating functions is linear.
We study generalized Deligne categories and related tensor envelopes for the universal two-dimensional cobordism theories described by rational functions, recently defined by Sazdanovic and one of the authors.
Following ideas of G. Moore and G. Segal, we explicitly construct a G-equivariant topological field theory from an arbitrary Frobenius algebra equipped with a twisted action of a finite group G.
We give a classification of open equivariant topological conformal field theories in terms of Calabi-Yau $A_\infty$-categories endowed with a group action.
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 category of 1-cobordisms and the category of matrices, and the strong one is a symmetric monoidal functor between the category of 1-cobordisms and the category of finite dimensional vector spaces. It has been proved that both strict and strong 1-dimensional topological quantum field theories are faithful.
We give a classification of open Klein topological conformal field theories in terms of Calabi-Yau $A_\infty$-categories endowed with an involution. Given an open Klein topological conformal field theory, there is a universal open-closed extension whose closed part is the involutive variant of the Hochschild chains of the open part.
These are notes from an informal mini-course on factorization homology, infinity-categories, and topological field theories. The target audience was imagined to be graduate students who are not homotopy theorists.
This paper gives a construction, using heat kernels, of differential forms on the moduli space of metrised ribbon graphs, or equivalently on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces with boundary. The construction depends on a manifold with a bundle of Frobenius algebras, satisfying various conditions. These forms satisfy gluing conditions which mean they form an open topological conformal field theory, i.e. a kind of open string theory. If the integral of these forms converged, it would yield the purely quantum part of the partition function of a Chern-Simons type gauge theory. Yang-Mills theory …
String backgrounds are described as purely geometric objects related to moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces, in the spirit of Segal's definition of a conformal field theory. Relations with conformal field theory, topological field theory and topological gravity are studied. For each field theory, an algebraic counterpart, the (homotopy) algebra satisfied by the tree level correlators, is constructed.
Starting from the quantum group SL_q(2,C), we construct operator invariants of 3-cobordisms with spin structure, satisfying the requirements of a topological quantum field theory and refining the Reshetikhin--Turaev and Turaev--Viro models. We establish the relationship between these two refined models.
We prove a decomposition formula for the dimensional reduction of an extended topological field theory that arises as an orbifold of an equivariant topological field theory. Our decomposition formula can be expressed in terms of a categorification of the integral with respect to groupoid cardinality. The application of our result to topological field theories of Dijkgraaf-Witten type proves a recent conjecture of Qiu-Wang.
In this paper, we initiate the study of the Givental group action on Cohomological Field Theories in terms of homotopical algebra. More precisely, we show that the stabilisers of Topological Field Theories in genus 0 (respectively in genera 0 and 1) are in one-to-one correspondence with commutative homotopy Batalin--Vilkovisky algebras (respectively wheeled commutative homotopy BV-algebras).
We consider a deformation of the BF theory in any dimension by means of the antifield BRST formalism. Possible consistent interaction terms for the action and the gauge symmetries are analyzed and we find a new class of topological gauge theories. Deformations of the world volume BF theory are considered as possible deformations of the topological open membrane. Therefore if we consider these theories on open membranes, we obtain noncommutative structures of the boundaries of open membranes, and we propose a generalization of the path integral representation of the star deformation.
In this note, we discuss electric-magnetic duality between a pair of 4d topological field theories (TQFTs) by considering their compactifications to 2 dimensions. These TQFTs control the long-distance behavior of loop and surface operators in 4d gauge theories with gapped phases. These were recently used in work by S. Gukov and A. Kapustin in detecting phases not distinguishable by the Wilson-'t Hooft criterion and by A. Kapustin and the author to construct discrete theta-angles for lattice Yang-Mills theories. The strong-weak duality is manifested in an exchange of dynamical and background de…
We study boundary conditions for extended topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) and their relation to topological anomalies. We introduce the notion of TQFTs with moduli level $m$, and describe extended anomalous theories as natural transformations of invertible field theories of this type. We show how in such a framework anomalous theories give rise naturally to homotopy fixed points for $n$-characters on $\infty$-groups. By using dimensional reduction on manifolds with boundaries, we show how boundary conditions for $n+1$-dimensional TQFTs produce $n$-dimensional anomalous field theorie…
The algebraic and geometric structures of deformations are analyzed concerning topological field theories of Schwarz type by means of the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism. Deformations of the Chern-Simons-BF theory in three dimensions induces the Courant algebroid structure on the target space as a sigma model. Deformations of BF theories in $n$ dimensions are also analyzed. Two dimensional deformed BF theory induces the Poisson structure and three dimensional deformed BF theory induces the Courant algebroid structure on the target space as a sigma model. The deformations of BF theories in $n$ dim…
Using the AKSZ prescription we construct 2D and 3D topological field theories associated to generalized complex manifolds. These models can be thought of as 2D and 3D generalizations of A- and B-models. Within the BV framework we show that the 3D model on a two-manifold cross an interval can be reduced to the 2D model.
An equivariant topological field theory is defined on a cobordism category of manifolds with principal fiber bundles for a fixed (finite) structure group. We provide a geometric construction which for any given morphism $G \to H$ of finite groups assigns in a functorial way to a $G$-equivariant topological field theory an $H$-equivariant topological field theory, the pushforward theory. When $H$ is the trivial group, this yields an orbifold construction for $G$-equivariant topological field theories which unifies and generalizes several known algebraic notions of orbifoldization.
We construct and classify topological lattice field theories in three dimensions. After defining a general class of local lattice field theories, we impose invariance under arbitrary topology-preserving deformations of the underlying lattice, which are generated by two new local lattice moves. Invariant solutions are in one--to--one correspondence with Hopf algebras satisfying a certain constraint. As an example, we study in detail the topological lattice field theory corresponding to the Hopf algebra based on the group ring $\C[G]$, and show that it is equivalent to lattice gauge theory at ze…
In this paper we discuss topological BF theories in 3 and 4 dimensions. Observables are associated to ordinary knots and links (in 3 dimensions) and to 2-knots (in 4 dimensions). The vacuum expectation values of such observables give a wide range of invariants. Here we consider mainly the 3-dimensional case, where these invariants include Alexander polynomials, HOMFLY polynomials and Kontsevich integrals.
