Combed 3-Manifolds with Concave Boundary, Framed Links, and Pseudo-Legendrian Links

We provide combinatorial realizations, according to the usual objects/moves scheme, of the following three topological categories: (1) pairs (M,v) where M is a 3-manifold (up to diffeomorphism) and v is a (non-singular vector) field, up to homotopy; here possibly the boundary of M is non-empty and v may be tangent to the boundary, but only in a concave fashion, and homotopy should preserve tangency type; (2) framed links L in M, up to framed isotopy; (3) triples (M,v,L), with (M,v) as above and L transversal to v, up to pseudo-Legendrian isotopy (transversality-preserving simultaneous homotopy of v and isotopy of L). All realizations are based on the notion of branched standard spine, and build on results previously obtained. Links are encoded by means of diagrams on branched spines, where the diagram is smooth with respect to the branching. Several motivations for being interested in combinatorial realizations of the topological categories considered in this paper are given in the introduction. The encoding of links is suitable for the comparison of the framed and the pseudo-Legendrian categories, and some applications are given in connection with contact structures, torsion and finite-order invariants. An estension of Trace's notion of winding number of a knot diagram is introduced and discussed.Comment: 38 pages, 33 figure

A theory of 2+1D fermionic topological orders and fermionic/bosonic topological orders with symmetries

We propose that, up to invertible topological orders, 2+1D fermionic topological orders without symmetry and 2+1D fermionic/bosonic topological orders with symmetry $G$ are classified by non-degenerate unitary braided fusion categories (UBFC) over a symmetric fusion category (SFC); the SFC describes a fermionic product state without symmetry or a fermionic/bosonic product state with symmetry $G$, and the UBFC has a modular extension. We developed a simplified theory of non-degenerate UBFC over a SFC based on the fusion coefficients $N^{ij}_k$ and spins $s_i$. This allows us to obtain a list that contains all 2+1D fermionic topological orders (without symmetry). We find explicit realizations for all the fermionic topological orders in the table. For example, we find that, up to invertible $p+\hspace{1pt}\mathrm{i}\hspace{1pt} p$ fermionic topological orders, there are only four fermionic topological orders with one non-trivial topological excitation: (1) the $K={\scriptsize \begin{pmatrix} -1&0\\0&2\end{pmatrix}}$ fractional quantum Hall state, (2) a Fibonacci bosonic topological order $2^B_{14/5}$ stacking with a fermionic product state, (3) the time-reversal conjugate of the previous one, (4) a primitive fermionic topological order that has a chiral central charge $c=\frac14$, whose only topological excitation has a non-abelian statistics with a spin $s=\frac14$ and a quantum dimension $d=1+\sqrt{2}$. We also proposed a categorical way to classify 2+1D invertible fermionic topological orders using modular extensions.Comment: 23 pages, 8 table

A trace for bimodule categories

We study a 2-functor that assigns to a bimodule category over a finite k-linear tensor category a k-linear abelian category. This 2-functor can be regarded as a category-valued trace for 1-morphisms in the tricategory of finite tensor categories. It is defined by a universal property that is a categorification of Hochschild homology of bimodules over an algebra. We present several equivalent realizations of this 2-functor and show that it has a coherent cyclic invariance. Our results have applications to categories associated to circles in three-dimensional topological field theories with defects. This is made explicit for the subclass of Dijkgraaf-Witten topological field theories.Comment: 49 pages; typos correcte

Etale realization on the A^1-homotopy theory of schemes

We compare Friedlander's definition of the etale topological type for simplicial schemes to another definition involving realizations of pro-simplicial sets. This can be expressed as a notion of hypercover descent for etale homotopy. We use this result to construct a homotopy invariant functor from the category of simplicial presheaves on the etale site of schemes over S to the category of pro-spaces. After completing away from the characteristics of the residue fields of S, we get a functor from the Morel-Voevodsky A^1-homotopy category of schemes to the homotopy category of pro-spaces