EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Classical and quantum Lagrangian field theories with boundaries II
Speaker: Alberto Cattaneo
Speaker Info: University of Zurich
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

Topological quantum field theories may be defined as appropriate functors from the cobordism category. The classical and perturbative versions thereof have started to be investigated only recently.

We discuss topological field theories in the AKSZ formalism (this includes Chern-Simons and BF theories as well as the Poisson sigma model). In this case, to boundary components (objects) one can associate a symplectic manifold and a coisotropic submanifold, whereas to cobordisms one associates canonical relations. This very natural construction (a special case, but with more structure, of a more general one recently introduced by V. Fock), yields new viewpoints on, say, the moduli space of flat connections or the symplectic groupoid of a Poisson manifold. This also constitutes the starting point for the perturbative quantization of these theories. The possibility of including boundaries of boundaries (and so on) naturally yields to a Lurie-type description. Eventually, one may hope to be able to reconstruct perturbative topological field theories by gluing simple pieces.