Smooth functorial field theories from B-fields and D-branes (Q2023787)

The purpose of this paper is rework the axioms for a topological quantum field theory (à la Atiyah) and a functorial field theory (à la Stolz and Teichner) so that they incorporate all the topological aspects of string theory, including open strings, D-branes, and gerbes modeling the B-field. The authors consider 4 simultaneous modifications to the notion of a TQFT: (1) D-branes, (2) a reflection structure (so that opposite bordisms go to complex conjugate vector spaces) with a positivity constraint, (3) maps to a target space, and (4) a smoothness axiom. Putting everything together gives a notion of a smooth open-closed functorial field theory (OCFFT). Then the main result of this paper is the functorial construction of a 2-dimensional, invertible, reflection-positive, superficial, smooth OCFFT on a target space \((M, Q)\), taking as input a target space brane geometry on \((M, Q)\), consisting of a bundle gerbe \(\mathcal G\) with connection on \(M\) (corresponding to the ``B-field'' in string theory) and a family \(\mathcal E\) of twisted vector bundles with connection over the submanifolds \(Q_i\) (the ``Chan-Paton bundles'').