Domain walls between 3d phases of Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFTs (Q2099799)

Defects, topologiical defects in particular, provide important structural insights into quantum field theories, most notably into their symmetries and dualities [\textit{J. Fröhlich} et al., Nucl. Phys., B 763, No. 3, 354--430 (2007; Zbl 1116.81060); \textit{D. Gaiotto} et al., J. High Energy Phys. 2015, No. 2, Paper No. 172, 62 p. (2015; Zbl 1388.83656)]. Defects in topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) are especially amenable to a mathematically precise treatment. This paper studies such surface defects in three-dimensional TQFT's obtained by the Reshetikhen-Turaev construction [\textit{N. Reshetikhin} and \textit{V. G. Turaev}, Invent. Math. 103, No. 3, 547--597 (1991; Zbl 0725.57007); \textit{V. G. Turaev}, Int. J. Mod. Phys. B 6, No. 11--12, 1807--1824 (1992; Zbl 0798.57002)] assigning a TQFT to any modular fusion category. Surface defects in Reshetikhen-Turaev theories have numerous application ranging from the construction of quanatum codes to the explanation of structures in representation theory [\textit{M. Barkeshli} et al., ``Twist defects and projective non-abelian braiding statistics'', Phys. Rev. B 87, No. 4, Article ID 045130, 23 p. (2013; \url{doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.87.045130}); \textit{J. Fuchs} et al., Theory Appl. Categ. 38, 436--594 (2022; Zbl 1494.18012)]. This paper aims to provide additional tools to consider defects separating different modular fusion categories. There are various views on defects. An especially simple class of defects are surface defects with the same TQFT on both sides of the defect, among which there is the transparent defect. The computation of an invariant with a surface defect can be reduced to the computation of an invariant of a manifold containing a ribbon graph labelled by a Frobenius algebra. The idea was proposed in [\textit{A. Kapustin} and \textit{N. Saulina}, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 83, 175--198 (2011; Zbl 1248.81206)] to relate the triangulations appearing in TQFT description of correlators of rational 2d conformal field theory [\textit{J. Fröhlich} et al., Adv. Math. 199, No. 1, 192--329 (2006; Zbl 1087.18006)] to surface defects in three-dimensional TQFTs. Defects can mathematically be described by a \textit{defect TQFT} as an axiomatization analogous to that of \textit{M. Atiyah} [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 68, 175--186 (1988; Zbl 0692.53053) and \textit{G. B. Segal} [NATO ASI Ser., Ser. C 250, 165--171 (1988; Zbl 0657.53060)] but applied to stratified manifolds [\textit{N. Carqueville} et al., Geom. Topol. 23, No. 2, 781--864 (2019; Zbl 1441.57030)]. The above mentioned construction of surface defects in TQFTs of Reshetikhen-Turaev type, as well as its generalizations to include line and point defects, was turned into a defect TQFT in [\textit{N. Carqueville} et al., Quantum Topol. 10, No. 3, 399--439 (2019; Zbl 1427.81153)]. \textit{Domain walls} provide a different point of view allowing one to address surface defects that separate non-identical topological field theories. A model-independent analysis of such defects was carried out in [\textit{J. Fuchs} et al., Commun. Math. Phys. 321, No. 2, 543--575 (2013; Zbl 1269.81169)], leading to the insight that the existence of surface defects is in general obstructed with an obstruction in the Witt group of modular fusion categories and yielding a very natural candidate for the bicategory of surface defects. The synopsis of the paper goes as follows. \begin{itemize} \item[\S 2] gives an explicit construction of a defect TQFT including domain walls between 3d regions labelled by different modular categories, where all modular fusion categories involved have to be in the same Witt class. One useful feature of the construction is that one can consider configurations with three or more bulk theories. The need to adapt the ambient category \(\mathcal{C}\) depending on the configuration of bulk theories can be staved off by considering generalized orbifold data [\textit{N. Carqueville} et al., Geom. Topol. 23, No. 2, 781--864 (2019; Zbl 1441.57030); Theory Appl. Categ. 35, 513--561 (2020; Zbl 1440.57016)]. \item[\S 3 and \S 4] compare the outcome of the construction to the model independent analysis [\textit{J. Fuchs} et al., Commun. Math. Phys. 321, No. 2, 543--575 (2013; Zbl 1269.81169)], writing an explicit Witt trivialization \[ \mathcal{C}_{A}^{\mathrm{loc}}\boxtimes\widetilde{\mathcal{C}_{B} ^{\mathrm{loc}}}\simeq\mathcal{Z}\left( _{A}\mathcal{C}_{B}\right) \] where the tilde sign denotes the reverse braiding. It is shown (Theorem 4.9) that, from the TQFT constructed in \S 2, one obtains the bicategory of surface defects in [\textit{J. Fuchs} et al., Commun. Math. Phys. 321, No. 2, 543--575 (2013; Zbl 1269.81169)], \(A\) and \(B\) are haploid commutative symmetric \(\Delta\)-separable Frobenius algebras, and the categories of local modules \(\mathcal{C}_{A}^{\mathrm{loc}}\) and \(\mathcal{C}_{B}^{\mathrm{loc}}\) are modular fusion categories both in the same Witt class as \(\mathcal{C}\) [\textit{A. Davydov} et al., Sel. Math., New Ser. 19, No. 1, 237--269 (2013; Zbl 1345.18005); J. Reine Angew. Math. 677, 135--177 (2013; Zbl 1271.18008)]. \item[Appendix] is concerned with trivialization as ribbon functor, showing that the component category \[ \mathcal{F}=\left( _{A}\mathcal{C}_{B}\right) _{ii} \] is spherical and the functor \[ \mathcal{Z}\left( _{A}\mathcal{C}_{B}\right) \rightarrow\mathcal{Z}\left( \mathcal{F}\right) ,M\mapsto\boldsymbol{1}_{\mathcal{F}}\,_{A}\otimes_{B}M \] is ribbon. \end{itemize}