On the whistle cobordism operation in string topology of classifying spaces (Q2175758)

Let $S$ be a set and $\text{OC-Cob}(S)$ be the category of open-closed strings whose objects are finite disjoint unions of oriented circles and intervals with ends labeled by elements in $S$. A monoidal structure on $\text{OC-Cob}(S)$ is defined by the disjoint union of cobordisms. By definition, a $2$-dimensional labeled open-closed topological quantum field theory is a monoidal functor $\mu$ from $ \text{OC-Cob}(S)$ to the category of graded vector spaces over a field $\mathbb K$. Let $G$ be a compact connected Lie group and $\mathcal B$ a set consisting of connected closed subgroups of $G$. Let $W = (W, \{W^H \})$ denote the whistle cobordism from the interval $I$ to the circle $S^1$ whose incoming boundary $\partial_{in} := I$ is connected with an arc $W^H $ labeled by a subgroup $H \in \mathcal B$ at each endpoint. Assume that the characteristic of the field $\mathbb K$ is $p$ and denote by $x_1,\dots, x_\ell$ a set of generators of $H^\ast(BG; \mathbb K)$. The main results of this paper are the following. Assume that $H \in \mathcal B$ is of maximal rank and that the integral homology groups of $G$ and $H$ are $p$-torsion free. \begin{itemize} \item[1)] The labeled open-closed cobordism $\mu_W$ and $\mu_{W^{op}}$ associated to the whistle cobordisms $(W, \{W^H \})$ and $(W^{op} , \{(W^{op} )^H \})$ are non-trivial. \item[2)] If the map between classifying spaces $B\iota: BH\longrightarrow BG$, induced by the inclusion $\iota : H \longrightarrow G$, satisfies $\deg (B\iota(x_i), p)=1$, $i=1, 2, \dots, \ell$, then the composite operation $\mu_W \circ \mu W^{op} = \mu_{W \circ W^{op}}$ is also non-trivial. \end{itemize} In Assertion 4.1, the author determines all labeled open-closed cobordism operations when $\mathbb K=\mathbb Q$ under an appropriate assumption on the set of labels.