Defects and WRT theory

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• Patrick Kinnear (Universität Hamburg)
• Monday 22 September 2025, 14:00-15:30
• Seminar Room 2, Newton Institute.

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BID - Quantum field theory with boundaries, impurities, and defects

I will discuss my work past and present related to defects and the Witten—Reshetikhin—Turaev TQFT . In one direction, I will discuss my work in equipping the anomaly of WRT , called Crane—Yetter, with background fields which are a G-local system. This can be phrased as giving a new version of CY which is a symmetry defect of classical G-gauge theory: the usual CY theory is the result of gauging this symmetry. In another direction, I will discuss work with Runkel to introduce defects into WRT itself, using skein theory. These two different directions are related in that they invite us to think about how to define and calculate with defects in a functorial, higher categorical framework.

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

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