Nonconstant hexagon relations and their cohomology (Q2224517)

The famous Pachner moves relate different triangulations of a (PL) manifold. For definiteness, let us focus on the case of 4-manifolds. There is a standard triangulation of the 4-dimensional sphere: use the boundary of a 5-simplex, \(\partial \Delta^5\). There are various ways to divide this sphere into two hemispheres. The different choices parameterize the different 4-dimensional Pachner moves. Specifically, to apply a Pachner move to a triangulated 4-manifold \(M^4\), you select some 4-simplices in \(M^4\) which meet according to the combinators of a hemisphere in \(\partial \Delta^5\), and then you replace your selected hemisphere with the other hemisphere in \(\partial \Delta^5\). The ``hexagon'' in the title of this paper is the hexagon whose vertices are the six individual 4-simplices in \(\partial \Delta^5\). Hexagon cohomology is a cohomology theory about the combinatorics of 4-dimensional Pachner moves which, the author of this paper hopes, will be related to interesting invariants of 4-manifolds; it is also related, unexpectedly, to four-dimensional free fermions. Hexagon cohomology, and the analogous pentagon cohomology of 3-dimensional Pachner moves, generalize the cohomology theories coming from quandles and Yang-Baxter relations which do provide refined topological invariants. As with those other theories, hexagon cohomology depends on a choice of labels or parameters, which may or may not be constant. Hence the ``nonconstant'' in the title of this paper.