Seminar on Cobordism and Topological Field Theories
Fall 2009
Fridays at 12:10 pm,
Surge 268
In
this seminar we'll work through recent notes of Lurie giving an outline of his
proof of the Cobordism Hypothesis, relating cobordism classes of manifolds and topological field
theories. This work brings together
several areas of recent mathematical interest: topological field theories, cobordisms of manifolds, and homotopical
approaches to higher categories. We'll
go over basic definitions and examples of all of the above and then work
towards understanding Lurie's proof.
Main
reference: J. Lurie, On the
classification of topological field theories.
Schedule of talks:
Friday,
September 25: John Baez, Introduction to the cobordism
hypothesis
Friday,
October 2: Julie Bergner, Manifolds and cobordism
Friday,
October 9: Julie Bergner, Topological field theories
Friday,
October 16: Chris Carlson, Topological field theories in low dimensions
Friday,
October 23: John Huerta, A short history of the interaction between quantum
field theory and topology
Friday,
October 30: Julie Bergner, 2-Extended topological field theories
Friday,
November 6: Julie Bergner, 2-Extended topological field theories and
2-categories
If you need a crash course in bicategories, see Tom Leinster’s “Basic bicategories.”
Friday,
November 13: John Baez, Cobordism bicategories
Friday,
November 20: Julie Bergner, Framings, dualizable
objects, and the statement of the cobordism
hypothesis
http://www.math.ucr.edu/~jbergner/cobordism.pdf Last updated: 12 November 2009