A functorial approach to differential characters

We describe Cheeger-Simons differential characters in terms of a variant of Turaev's homotopy quantum field theories based on chains in a smooth manifold X.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol4/agt-4-6.abs.htm

The phantom limb

Thesis (M.D.)—Boston Universit

Anomalies and Invertible Field Theories

We give a modern geometric viewpoint on anomalies in quantum field theory and illustrate it in a 1-dimensional theory: supersymmetric quantum mechanics. This is background for the resolution of worldsheet anomalies in orientifold superstring theory.Comment: 21 pages, based talk at String-Math 2013; small corrections in v