Construction of the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT from conformal field theory (Q493108)

This paper is the long-awaited conclusion of a four part series whose goal is to provide a geometric, conformal field theory (CFT), construction for the \(\mathcal{U}_q(\mathfrak{sl}(N))\) Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev topological quantum field theories (WRT TQFTs). As a result of this construction, we may use the geometric quantization of the moduli space of flat \(SU(N)\)-connections to study WRT TQFTs. This has already led to several deep results concerning mapping class groups and the coloured Jones polynomial. The construction in this paper for \(SU(N)\) ought in principle to generalize to any simply connected gauge group. The first two papers of the series geometrically constructed a modular functor \(\mathcal{V}^\dagger_{N,K}\) [Int. J. Math. 18, No. 8, 919--993 (2007; Zbl 1128.81026); J. Knot Theory Ramifications 16, No. 2, 127--202 (2007; Zbl 1123.81041)]. The main theorem is that this `conformal field theoretic' functor is isomorphic to the modular functor \(\mathcal{V}^{\mathrm{SU}(N)}_K\) that determines the WRT TQFT and that is constructed using skein theory. The key step is to show that this is an isomorphism in genus zero, which is sufficient thanks to [Quantum Topol. 3, No. 3--4, 255--291 (2012; Zbl 1263.57025)]. Note that we do not yet have a geometric construction of a duality structure for \(\mathcal{V}^\dagger_{N,K}\), and we know that \(\mathcal{V}^\dagger_{N,K}\) satisfies the duality axiom only thanks to the results of this paper.