Please note that the list below only shows forthcoming events, which may not include regular events that have not yet been entered for the forthcoming term. Please see the past events page for a list of all seminar series that the department has on offer.
Wed, 26 Nov 2025
16:00 -
17:00
L6
Extending the Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT
Glen Lim
(University of Oxford )
Abstract
A d-dimensional TQFT is a topological invariant which assigns (d-1)-dimensional manifolds to vector spaces and d-dimensional cobordisms to linear maps. In the early 90s, Reshetikhin and Turaev constructed examples of these in the case d=3, using the data of certain types of linear categories. In this talk, I will provide an overview of this construction, and then explore how this might be meaningfully extended downwards to assign 1-manifolds to "2-vector spaces". Minimal knowledge of category theory assumed!