Localisations of cobordism categories and invertible TFTs in dimension two (Q388556)

The subject of the present paper is the localization of cobordism categories in dimension 2 and the classification of associated invertible topological quantum field theories. The focus is on the most general case of open-closed categories of not necessarily orientable cobordisms. Subcategories with only closed (circle) objects, only open (interval) objects, only orientable cobordisms and various further restrictions and intersections of these are also considered. As a first step the categories are presented via a generators and relations description generalizing the one given by \textit{A. D. Lauda} and \textit{H. Pfeiffer} [Topology Appl. 155, No. 7, 623--666 (2008; Zbl 1158.57038)] for the orientable case. A suitable modification of the Euler characteristic yields a functor from the cobordism categories to the integers. In the main part of the work it is shown that this functor induces equivalences of the localizations (categories with adjoint inverses) of the open-closed category, the closed category and the open category, with the integers (Theorems~3.7,3.9,3.12). The same holds when the categories are restricted to orientable cobordisms (Theorems~3.8,3.10,3.13). These results are used in turn to show that for all these cases the corresponding symmetric monoidal category of invertible topological quantum field theories is equivalent to the discrete category of invertible complex numbers (Theorem~4.3). For the closed case this equivalence is also presented in terms of a concrete formula (Theorem~4.4) and compared to the known classification in terms of commutative Frobenius algebras as given in [\textit{V. Turaev} and \textit{P. Turner}, Algebr. Geom. Topol. 6, 1069--1093 (2006; Zbl 1134.57004)]. In a final part of the paper statements about the structure of the different cobordism categories are transformed into statements about their classifying spaces. This leads the authors to formulate the following conjecture: On classifying spaces the canonical maps from the various considered cobordism categories to their respective localizations induce homotopy equivalences (Conjecture~5.3). The paper also includes an appendix that details the concept of based symmetric monoidal functor and associated tools. The paper is well structured, very readable and connects to the relevant key references in the literature.