Chord diagrams, contact-topological quantum field theory and contact categories

DOI10.2140/AGT.2010.10.2091MaRDI QIDQ600811zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Daniel Mathews

Publication date 2 November 2010

Published in Algebraic \& Geometric Topology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0903.1453

zbMATH Keywords

contact categorysutured Floer homologyTQFT

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Contact manifolds (general theory) (53D10) Symplectic aspects of Floer homology and cohomology (53D40) General geometric structures on low-dimensional manifolds (57M50) Topological quantum field theories (aspects of differential topology) (57R56) Floer homology (57R58)

Abstract: We consider contact elements in the sutured Floer homology of solid tori with longitudinal sutures, as part of the (1+1)-dimensional topological quantum field theory defined by Honda--Kazez--Mati'{c} in cite{HKM08}. The $$ $SFH$ of these solid tori forms a "categorification of Pascal's triangle", and contact structures correspond bijectively to chord diagrams, or sets of disjoint properly embedded arcs in the disc. Their contact elements are distinct and form distinguished subsets of $SFH$ of order given by the Narayana numbers. We find natural "creation and annihilation operators" which allow us to define a QFT-type basis of $SFH$, consisting of contact elements. Sutured Floer homology in this case reduces to the combinatorics of chord diagrams. We prove that contact elements are in bijective correspondence with comparable pairs of basis elements with respect to a certain partial order. The algebraic and combinatorial structures in this description have intrinsic contact-topological meaning. In particular, the QFT-basis of $SFH$ and its partial order have a natural interpretation in pure contact topology, related to the contact category of a disc: the partial order enables us to tell when the sutured solid cylinder obtained by "stacking" two chord diagrams has a tight contact structure. This leads us to extend Honda's notion of contact category to a "bounded" contact category, containing chord diagrams and contact structures which occur within a given contact solid cylinder. We compute this bounded contact category in certain cases. Moreover, the decomposition of a contact element into basis elements naturally gives a triple of contact structures on solid cylinders which we regard as a type of "distinguished triangle" in the contact category. We also use the algebraic structures arising among contact elements to extend the notion of contact category to a 2-category.

Review text

Honda, Kazez, and Matić proved that Sutured Floer Homology with \(\mathbb{Z}_2\)-coefficients (\(\mathbb{Z}_2\)-SFH) shares some formal properties with \((1+1)\)-TQFT [\textit{K. Honda, W. H. Kazez} and \textit{G. Matić}, Contact structures, sutured Floer homology and TQFT, preprint, arXiv:0807.2431]. This paper studies \(\mathbb{Z}_2\)-SFH for a solid torus with longitudinal sutures. In this case, contact elements are in bijective correspondence with what the author calls ``chord diagrams, which are sets of disjoint properly embedded arcs in a disc. The main theorem reduces the study of this \(\mathbb{Z}_2\)-SFH to the pleasing combinatorial theory of chord diagrams. Using ``creation and annihilation operators reminiscent of QFT, a basis for each SFH vector space is given, consisting of contact elements. The above results have meaning in contact geometry, independent of SFH. Section 3 defines a ``bounded extension of K. Honda's ``contact category, consisting of chord diagrams and contact structures which occur within a given contact solid cylinder. Using the main theorem, the structure of the bounded contact category can be investigated combinatorially, and it can be computed in certain cases. The contact-geometric notion of a ``bypass attachment corresponds to a combinatorial ``bypass move on chord diagrams. This leads to a rough notion of ``exact triangle in the bounded contact category, in line with the expectation that the contact category should in some sense be a triangulated category.

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Cited in

(12)

• A-infinity algebras, strand algebras, and contact categories
• Dimensionally reduced sutured Floer homology as a string homology
• A categorification of \(\mathbf{U}_T(\mathfrak{sl}(1|1))\) and its tensor product representations
• Strand algebras and contact categories
• Contact categories of disks
• Sutured TQFT, torsion and tori
• Twisty itsy bitsy topological field theory
• Counting curves on surfaces
• Contact topology and holomorphic invariants via elementary combinatorics
• Sutured Floer homology, sutured TQFT and noncommutative QFT
• Formal contact categories
• Itsy bitsy topological field theory

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