Seminar series
Date
Mon, 12 May 2025
15:30
15:30
Location
L5
Speaker
Filippos Sytilidis
Organisation
Oxford University
A topological quantum field theory (TQFT) is a functor from a category of bordisms to a category of vector spaces. Classifying low-dimensional TQFTs often involves presenting bordism categories in terms of generators and relations. In this talk, we introduce these concepts and outline a general procedure for obtaining such presentations using Morse–Cerf theory and surgery. We further discuss how this perspective can be extended to yield presentations of bordism bicategories.