Seminar series
Date
Mon, 15 Jun 2020
Time
15:45 -
16:45
Location
Virtual
Speaker
Severin Bunk
Organisation
University of Hamburg
In this talk I will present results from an ongoing joint research program with Konrad Waldorf. Its main goal is to understand the relation between gerbes on a manifold M and open-closed smooth field theories on M. Gerbes can be viewed as categorified line bundles, and we will see how gerbes with connections on M and their sections give rise to smooth open-closed field theories on M. If time permits, we will see that the field theories arising in this way have several characteristic properties, such as invariance under thin homotopies, and that they carry positive reflection structures. From a physical perspective, ourconstruction formalises the WZW amplitude as part of a smooth bordism-type field theory.