A framework for geometric field theories and their classification in dimension one

DOI10.3842/SIGMA.2021.072MaRDI QIDQ2236613zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Matthias Ludewig, Augusto Stoffel

Publication date 25 October 2021

Published in SIGMA. Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.05721

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zbMATH Keywords

bordism field theory vector bundles

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of vector bundles and moduli spaces in mathematical physics (twistor theory, instantons, quantum field theory) (14D21) Topology of vector bundles and fiber bundles (57R22) Topological quantum field theories (aspects of differential topology) (57R56)

Abstract: In this paper, we develop a general framework of geometric functorial field theories, meaning that all bordisms in question are endowed with geometric structures. We take particular care to establish a notion of smooth variation of such geometric structures, so that it makes sense to require the output of our field theory to depend smoothly on the input. We then test our framework on the case of

1

-dimensional field theories (with or without orientation) over a manifold

M

. Here the expectation is that such a field theory is equivalent to the data of a vector bundle over

M

with connection and, in the nonoriented case, the additional data of a nondegenerate bilinear pairing; we prove that this is indeed the case in our framework.

Review text

This paper introduces a framework in terms of stacks to define bordisms with geometric structures in quantum field theory. A ``geometry on \(d\)-manifolds is a stack \(\mathcal{G}\rightarrow \operatorname{Man}^d\) on the site \(\operatorname{Man}^d\) of manifolds of dimension \(d\). The geometric bordism category \(\mathcal{G}\operatorname{Bord}\) has as objects \(X\in \operatorname{Man}^d\) together with a \(\mathcal{G}\)-structure on \(X\), that is, an object of the groupoid \(\mathcal{G}(X)\) (the subcategory lying over \(\operatorname{id}_X\)). The geometric bordism category becomes ``smooth considering simplicial stacks or a complete Segal object in the category of stacks. Therefore, \(\mathcal{G}Bord_n\) consists of \(d\)-dimensional manifolds \(X\) together with a collection of marked hypersurfaces \(Y_k\subset X\), for \(k=0,\ldots,n\), where the composition is encoded by forgetting the marked hypersurfaces. The site \(\operatorname{Man}^d\) is promoted to a category of submersions \(X\rightarrow S\) and morphisms of submersions in order to have a suitable Grothendieck topology. A \(d\)-dimensional field theory with geometry \(\mathcal{G}\) is a symmetric monoidal smooth functor \(Z:\mathcal{G}\operatorname{Bord}\rightarrow \operatorname{Vect}\), where \(\operatorname{Vect}\) is the smooth category of finite dimensional vector bundles on \(\operatorname{Man}\). In dimension one, the papers shows that the groupoid of \(1\)-dimensional oriented topological field theories over \(M\) is equivalent to the groupoid of finite-dimensional vector bundles with connections over \(M\). A similar result is proved for the unoriented case.

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