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Line and surface defects in Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT (1710.10214v2)
Published 27 Oct 2017 in math.QA, hep-th, math-ph, math.GT, and math.MP
Abstract: A modular tensor category $\mathcal{C}$ gives rise to a Reshetikhin-Turaev type topological quantum field theory which is defined on 3-dimensional bordisms with embedded $\mathcal{C}$-coloured ribbon graphs. We extend this construction to include bordisms with surface defects which in turn can meet along line defects. The surface defects are labelled by $\Delta$-separable symmetric Frobenius algebras and the line defects by "multi-modules" which are equivariant with respect to a cyclic group action. Our invariant cannot distinguish non-isotopic embeddings of 2-spheres, but we give an example where it distinguishes non-isotopic embeddings of 2-tori.