Line and surface defects in Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT (Q2327757)

An extension of (3-dimensional) Reshetikhin-Turaev topological quantum field theory (TQFT) ([\textit{N. Yu. Reshetikhin} and \textit{V. G. Turaev}, Commun. Math. Phys. 127, No. 1, 1--26 (1990; Zbl 0768.57003); Invent. Math. 103, No. 3, 547--597 (1991; Zbl 0725.57007)]; hereafter referred to as [1]) to include 3-dimensional TQFT with defects, is given. For this purpose, the bordism category \(\mathrm{Bord}^{\mathrm{def}}_3(\mathbb{D})\) whose morphisms are equivalence classes of stratified manifolds, and the set of defect data \(\mathbb{D}\) contains \(D_j\), \(1\le j\le 3\) is introduced (\S3, cf. [the first and third author with \textit{C. Meusburger}, ``3-dimensional defect TQFTs and their tricategories'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1603.01171}; the authors, ``Orbifolds of \(n\)-dimensional defect TQFTs'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1705.06085}]; hereafter referred to as [2]). Then following [1], TQFT with respect to this category is defined in terms of a modular tensor category \(\mathcal{C}\) that can evaluated on bordisms with embedded \(\mathcal{C}\)-colored ribbon tangles (cf. \S2). Given \(\mathcal{C}\), a set of defect data \(\mathbb{D}^\mathcal{C}\) is defined. Then for to extend the bordism category to \(\widehat{\mathrm{Bord}}_3^{\mathrm{def}}(\mathbb{D}^\mathcal{C})\) to absorb the gluing anomaly (cf. [1]), a symmetric modular functor \[ \mathcal{Z}^\mathcal{C}:\widehat{\mathrm{Bord}}_3^{\mathrm{def}}(\mathbb{D}^\mathcal{C})\to \mathrm{Vect}, \tag{1} \] is introduced which gives an extension of Rechetikhin-Turaev (3-dimensional) TQFT to include surface defects (Theorem 1.1, Theorem 5.8). This functor gives topological invariants \(\mathcal{Z}^\mathcal{C}((N,\iota);A)\) of a closed 3-manifold \(N\) and an embedding \(\iota:\Sigma\to N\), where \(A\) is \(\Delta\)-separable symmetric Frobenius algebra. It is shown if \(\Sigma\) is a 2-sphere, this invariants are a same for all \(\iota\) (and \(A\)). But if \(N\) is a torus, this invariant distinguishes embeddings (\S5, the last section). The defect data \(\mathbb{D}^\mathcal{C}\) is a sum of \(D_j^\mathcal{C}, 1\le j \le 3\). \(D_3^\mathcal{C}=\{\mathcal{C}\}\) and \(D_2^\mathcal{C}\) is the set of \(\Delta\)-separable symmetric Frobenius algebra in \(\mathcal{C}\) [\textit{A. Kapustin} and \textit{N. Saulina}, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 83, 175--198 (2011; Zbl 1248.81206)]. Description of \(\mathcal{D}_1^\mathcal{C}\) is complicated (cf. (1.5), Figure 1 and \S2). Especially, it introduce the notion of multi-module with cyclic symmetry (Definition 2.12, Definition 5.1). Details are given in \S2. \S3 and \S4 deal with bordism with defect in three dimensions, then Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT, which proposes a modular tensor category \(\mathcal{C}\) over \(k\) gives rise to a symmetric monoidal functor (a TQFT) \[ \mathcal{Z}^{\mathrm{RT},\mathcal{C}};\widehat{\mathrm{Bord}}_3^{\mathrm{rib}}(\mathcal{C})\to \mathrm{Vect}_k \tag{2} \] (Theorem 4.2) is reviewed in \S4. In \S5, the main and last section, (1) is derived from (2) to reduce the evaluation of \(\mathcal{Z}^\mathcal{C}\) on a \(\mathbb{D}^\mathcal{C}\)-decorate bordism \(N\) to a construction \(\mathcal{Z}^{\mathrm{RT},\mathcal{C}}\) by the following procedure (cf. Figure 5.1); \begin{itemize} \item[1.] Replace every 1-stratum in \(N\) decorated by \(((A_1,\epsilon_1, \dots, (A_n,\epsilon_n), M)\in D_1^\mathcal{C}\) (cf. Definition 5.2), with an \(M\)-decorated ribbon. \item[2.] For every 2-stratum decorated by \(A_i\equiv (A_i.\mu_i, \Delta_i)\in D_2^\mathcal{C}\), choose a triangulation \(t_i\) decorated the 1- and 0- strata of the Poincaré dual of \(t_i\) with \(A_i\) and \(\mu_i\) with \(\Delta_i\) respectively, and view the result as a ribbon graph embedded in \(N\),using the action \(\rho_i:A_i\otimes M\to M\) to connect \(A_i\)-ribbons to the \(M\)-ribbon as dictated by the triangulation \(t_i\). \item[3.] Evaluate resulting bordism \(N(\{t_i\}\ldots)\) with embedded ribbon graph with the functor \(\mathcal{Z}^{\mathrm{RT},\mathcal{C}}\). \item[4.] Take the limit of the resulting inverse system to produce \(\mathcal{Z}^\mathcal{C}\), independent of all choices. \end{itemize}