Last time we discussed the cobordism hypothesis, which, roughly speaking, asserts that there is a unique topological field theory whose value on a point is a given fully dualizable object in an arbitrary symmetric monoidal (infinity,n) category. In this talk, I will describe an explicit homotopy theoretic construction, due to Jacob Lurie, which computes this TFT in the special case where the target is the (infinity, n) category of E_n algebras in a symmetric monoidal (infinity, 1) category.
Math-Physics Joint Seminar
Friday, October 9, 2009 - 11:00am
Pranav Pandit
University of Pennsylvania