Modular Categories and TQFTs Beyond Semisimplicity
Christian Blanchet, Marco De Renzi
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26 pages, to appear in Topology and Geometry: A Collection of Essays Dedicated to Vladimir G. Turaev, ed. A. Papadopoulos, European Mathematical Society Publishing House, Berlin, 2021. Formulas for semisimple stabilization coefficients fixed in version 2
Vladimir Turaev discovered in the early years of quantum topology that the notion of modular category was an appropriate structure for building 3-dimensional Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs for short) containing invariants of links in 3-manifolds such as Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev ones. In recent years, generalized notions of modular categories, which relax the semisimplicity requirement, have been successfully used to extend Turaev's construction to various non-semisimple settings. We report on these recent developments in the domain, showing the richness of Vladimir's lineage.
We define a universal state sum construction which specializes to most previously known state sums (Turaev-Viro, Dijkgraaf-Witten, Crane-Yetter, Douglas-Reutter, Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev surgery formula, Brown-Arf). The input data for the state sum is an n-category satisfying various conditions, including finiteness, semisimplicity and n-pivotality. From this n-category one constructs an n+1-dimensional TQFT, and applying the TQFT gluing rules to a handle decomposition of an n+1-manifold produces the state sum.
We give an overview over several constructions of TQFT's over finite fields and cyclotomic integers and their applications to characterizing 3-manifolds and their fundamental groups.
We find decomposition series of length at most two for modular representations in positive characteristic of mapping class groups of surfaces induced by an integral version of the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev SO(3)-TQFT at the p-th root of unity, where p is an odd prime. The dimensions of the irreducible factors are given by Verlinde-type formulas.
We construct families of TQFT's over the finite field Z/pZ starting from an integral TQFT obtained by Frohman and Nicas. These TQFT's are likely to describe the constant order contributions of the cyclotomic integer expansions of the Reshetikhin Turaev Ohtsuki theories. Their modular structure is intimately related to the p-modular representation theory of the symmetric groups S_n. We construct resolutions of simple p-modular TQFT's and S_n-modules over Z/pZ using powers of Lefschetz operators. These yield expansions of the irreducible p-modular S_n-characters in terms of the ordianry ones as …
We derive formulae which lend themselves to TQFT interpretations of the Milnor torsion, the Lescop invariant, the Casson invariant, and the Casson-Morita cocyle of a 3-manifold, and, furthermore, relate them to the Reshetikhin-Turaev theory.
We use modified traces to renormalize Lyubashenko's closed 3-manifold invariants coming from twist non-degenerate finite unimodular ribbon categories. Our construction produces new topological invariants which we upgrade to 2+1-TQFTs under the additional assumption of factorizability. The resulting functors provide monoidal extensions of Lyubashenko's mapping class group representations, as discussed in arXiv:2010.14852. This general framework encompasses important examples of non-semisimple modular categories coming from the representation theory of quasi-Hopf algebras, which were left out of…
For p>3 a prime, and g>2 an integer, we use Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT) to study a family of p-1 highest weight modules L_p(lambda) for the symplectic group Sp(2g,K) where K is an algebraically closed field of characteristic p. This permits explicit formulae for the dimension and the formal character of L_p(lambda) for these highest weights.
Homotopy Quantum Field Theories (HQFTs) generalize more familiar Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs). In generalization of the surgery construction of 3-dimensional TQFTs from modular categories, we use surgery to derive 3-dimensional HQFTs from G-modular categories.
We construct 3-dimensional once-Extended Topological Quantum Field Theories (ETQFTs for short) out of (possibly non-semisimple) modular categories, and we explicitly identify linear categories and functors in their image. The circle category of an ETQFT produced by our construction is equivalent to the full subcategory of projective objects of the underlying modular category. In particular, it need not be semisimple.
We define a symmetric monoidal (4,3)-category with duals whose objects are certain enriched multi-fusion categories. For every modular tensor category $\mathcal{C}$, there is a self enriched multi-fusion category $\mathfrak{C}$ giving rise to an object of this symmetric monoidal (4,3)-category. We conjecture that the extended 3D TQFT given by the fully dualizable object $\mathfrak{C}$ extends the 1-2-3-dimensional Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT associated to the modular tensor category $\mathcal{C}$ down to dimension zero.
It has been conjectured that every $(2+1)$-TQFT is a Chern-Simons-Witten (CSW) theory labelled by a pair $(G,λ)$, where $G$ is a compact Lie group, and $λ\in H^4(BG;Z)$ a cohomology class. We study two TQFTs constructed from Jones' subfactor theory which are believed to be counterexamples to this conjecture: one is the quantum double of the even sectors of the $E_6$ subfactor, and the other is the quantum double of the even sectors of the Haagerup subfactor. We cannot prove mathematically that the two TQFTs are indeed counterexamples because CSW TQFTs, while physically defined, are not yet mat…
This paper presents a way to estimate the Heegaard genus of a $3$-manifold using the Turaev-Viro state sum TQFT. The Turaev-Viro state sum TQFT is derived from the modular category associated to the quantum group $U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_2)$, which is unitary for some $q$ by Wenzl. Hence by Turaev and Virelizier the corresponding TQFT is unitary. We modify a proof by Garoufalidis to give a lower bound of the Heegaard genus using a unitary TQFT, and then use the software Regina to provide some known counterexamples to the rank versus genus conjecture.
We show that unrolled quantum groups at odd roots of unity give rise to relative modular categories. These are the main building blocks for the construction of 1+1+1-TQFTs extending CGP invariants, which are non-semisimple quantum invariants of closed 3-manifolds decorated with ribbon graphs and cohomology classes. When we consider the zero cohomology class, these quantum invariants are shown to coincide with the renormalized Hennings invariants coming from the corresponding small quantum groups.
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 these TQFTs, and we express the action of a set of generators through the algebraic data of the underlying modular category $\mathcal{C}$. This allows us to prove that the projective representations induced from the non-semisimple TQFTs of [arXiv:1912.02063] are equivalent to those obtained by Lyubashenko via generators and relations in [arXiv:hep-th/9405167]. …
We show that there exist infinitely many pairs of non-homeomorphic closed oriented SOL torus bundles with the same quantum (TQFT) invariants. This follows from the arithmetic behind the conjugacy problem in $SL(2,\Z)$ and its congruence quotients, the classification of SOL (polycyclic) 3-manifold groups and an elementary study of a family of Pell equations. A key ingredient is the congruence subgroup property of modular representations, as it was established by Coste and Gannon, Bantay, Xu for various versions of TQFT, and lastly by Ng and Schauenburg for the Drinfeld doubles of spherical fusi…
We construct and study a new family of TQFTs based on nilpotent highest weight representations of quantum sl(2) at a root of unity indexed by generic complex numbers. This extends to cobordisms the non-semi-simple invariants defined in (arXiv:1202.3553) including the Kashaev invariant of links. Here the modular category framework does not apply and we use the ``universal construction''. Our TQFT provides a monoidal functor from a category of surfaces and their cobordisms into the category of graded finite dimensional vector spaces and their degree 0-morphisms and depends on the choice of a roo…
We work in the reduced SU(N,K) modular category as constructed recently by Blanchet. We define spin type and cohomological refinements of the Turaev-Viro invariants of closed oriented 3-manifolds and give a formula relating them to Blanchet's invariants. Roberts' definition of the Turaev-Viro state sum is exploited. Furthermore, we construct refined Turaev-Viro and Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT's and study the relationship between them.
In this paper, we establish the general theory of (2+1)-dimensional topological quantum field theory (in short, TQFT) with a Verlinde basis. It is a consequence that we have a Dehn surgery formula for 3-manifold invariants for this kind of TQFT's. We will show that Turaev-Viro-Ocneanu unitary TQFT's obtained from subfactors satisfy the axioms of TQFT's with Verlinde bases. Hence, in a Turaev-Viro-Ocneanu TQFT, we have a Dehn surgery formula for 3-manifolds. It turns out that this Dehn surgery formula is nothing but the formula of the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariant constructed from a tube system,…
A modular tensor category $\mathcal{C}$ gives rise to a Reshetikhin-Turaev type topological quantum field theory which is defined on 3-dimensional bordisms with embedded $\mathcal{C}$-coloured ribbon graphs. We extend this construction to include bordisms with surface defects which in turn can meet along line defects. The surface defects are labelled by $Δ$-separable symmetric Frobenius algebras and the line defects by "multi-modules" which are equivariant with respect to a cyclic group action. Our invariant cannot distinguish non-isotopic embeddings of 2-spheres, but we give an example where …
A 3-dimensional homotopy quantum field theory (HQFT) can be described as a TQFT for surfaces and 3-cobordisms endowed with homotopy classes of maps into a given space. For a group $π$, we introduce a notion of a modular crossed $π$-category and show that such a category gives rise to a 3-dimensional HQFT with target space $K(π,1)$. This includes numerical invariants of 3-dimensional $π$-manifolds and a 2-dimensional homotopy modular functor. We also introduce and discuss a parallel notion of a quasitriangular crossed Hopf $π$-coalgebra.
Let p an integer. We define a family of idempotents (and nilpotents) in the Temperley - Lieb algebras at 4p-th roots of unity which generalize the usual Jones-Wenzl idempotents. These new idempotents correspond to finite dimentional simple and projective indecomposable representations of the restricted quantum group Uqsl(2), where q is a 2p-th root of unity. In the manner of the [BHMV95] topological quantum field theorie (TQFT), they provide a canonical basis in colored skein modules to define mapping class groups representations. In the torus case, this basis allows us to obtain a partial mat…
We develop the general theory for the construction of Extended Topological Quantum Field Theories (ETQFTs) associated with the Costantino-Geer-Patureau quantum invariants of closed 3-manifolds. In order to do so, we introduce relative modular categories, a class of ribbon categories which are modeled on representations of unrolled quantum groups, and which can be thought of as a non-semisimple analogue to modular categories. Our approach exploits a 2-categorical version of the universal construction introduced by Blanchet, Habegger, Masbaum, and Vogel. The 1+1+1-EQFTs thus obtained are realize…
Classical and quantum Chern-Simons with gauge group $\text{U}(1)^N$ were classified by Belov and Moore in \cite{belov_moore}. They studied both ordinary topological quantum field theories as well as spin theories. On the other hand a correspondence is well known between ordinary $(2+1)$-dimensional TQFTs and modular tensor categories. We study group categories and extend them slightly to produce modular tensor categories that correspond to toral Chern-Simons. Group categories have been widely studied in other contexts in the literature \cite{frolich_kerler},\cite{quinn},\cite{joyal_street},\ci…
Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs) pertinent to some emergent low energy phenomena of condensed matter lattice models in 2+1 and 3+1D are explored. Many of our field theories are highly-interacting without free quadratic analogs. Some of our bosonic TQFTs can be regarded as the continuum field theory formulation of Dijkgraaf-Witten twisted discrete gauge theories. Other bosonic TQFTs beyond the Dijkgraaf-Witten description and all fermionic spin TQFTs are either higher-form gauge theories where particles must have strings attached, or fermionic discrete gauge theories obtained by gaugi…
This survey covers some of the results contained in the papers by Costantino, Geer and Patureau (https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.3553) and by Blanchet, Costantino, Geer and Patureau (https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7289). In the first one the authors construct two families of Reshetikhin-Turaev-type invariants of 3-manifolds, $\mathrm{N}_r$ and $\mathrm{N}^0_r$, using non-semisimple categories of representations of a quantum version of $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ at a $2r$-th root of unity with $r \geqslant 2$. The secondary invariants $\mathrm{N}^0_r$ conjecturally extend the original Reshetikhin-Turaev quantum …
