QU Lectures: Correlators, topological field theory and categorification (3/3)

by Paul Wedrich (U Hamburg)

Categorification in quantum topology 
I will start by giving an introduction to the framework of "categorification" and outline how it is used for the construction and study of topological field theories as a kind of dual to the process of dimensional reduction. After situating some examples that we have met previously, I will present a sequence of increasingly sophisticated categorifications of quantum invariants of knots. As an application, we obtain a new invariant of smooth 4D manifolds from Khovanov's categorification of the Jones polynomial, akin to the string net spaces from the first talk of this series, but with all dimensions doubled.

PhD students in QURS who want to acquire credits for attending these lectures are requested to register for the course via Geventis until 13 January: https://www.geventis.uni-hamburg.de/course?course=7983970120265348904