Two-dimensional extended homotopy field theories (Q6087244)

There are several different ways of generalising topological (quantum) field theories. Extended TFTs extend the classical form from manifolds to manifolds with corners and from categories to using some form of higher category theory. Another generalisation is obtained by equipping the manifolds with principal \(G\)-bundles. For \(G\) a discrete group, such a generalisation was introduced by Turaev, in 1999, see also [\textit{V. Turaev}, Homotopy quantum field theory. With appendices by Michael Müger and Alexis Virelizier. Zürich: European Mathematical Society (EMS) (2010; Zbl 1243.81016)], who calls the resulting theory a \emph{homotopy (quantum) field theory}. These theories are obtained by adapting the axioms of TFTs to manifolds and cobordisms endowed with maps to a fixed target space, \(X\), most commonly taken to be a classifying space for some chosen discrete group \(G\). In this paper, these two different directions are combined to give extended homotopy field theories and then, for the 2-dimensional case, such theories are classified when \(X\) is a \(K(G,1)\). There are two classifications proposed. The first is obtained via the construction of a computadic symmetric monoidal bicategory, which thus gives a presentation of the bicategory of \(X\)-cobordisms. This is obtained by introducing a version of Schommer-Pries's presentation, but with the generating diagrams and relations labelled by elements of \(G\). This is then applied to when the target bicategory for the EHFT is that, \(Alg^2_{k}\) of \({k}\)-algebras, bimodules and bimodule morphisms. This then gives a generalisation of \textit{C. J. Schommer-Pries}'s classification of \(Alg^2_{k}\)-valued TFTS from [``The Classification of Two-Dimensional Extended Topological Field Theories'', PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley (2009), \url{arXiv:1112.1000}] and, eventually to a notion of Frobenius algebras adapted to this context.