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We begin with a brief sketch of what is known and conjectured concerning braided monoidal 2-categories and their relevance to 4d TQFTs and 2-tangles. Then we give concise definitions of semistrict monoidal 2-categories and braided monoidal 2-categories, and show how these may be unpacked to give long explicit definitions similar to, but not quite the same as, those given by Kapranov and Voevodsky. Finally, we describe how to construct a semistrict braided monoidal 2-category Z(C) as the `center' of a semistrict monoidal category C, in a manner analogous to the construction of a braided monoidal category as the center of a monoidal category. As a corollary this yields a strictification theorem for braided monoidal 2-categories. 1 Introduction This is the first of a series of articles developing the program introduced in the paper `Higher-Dimensional Algebra and Topological Quantum Field Theory' [1], henceforth referred to as `HDA'. This program consists of generalizing algebraic concep...

(0.1) The goal of this paper is to develop a certain mathematical framework underlying the S-duality conjecture of Vafa and Witten [VW]. Let us recall the formulation. Let S be a smooth projective surface over C and G a semisimple algebraic group. Denote by MG(S,n) the moduli space of semistable principal G-bundles on

Just as knots and links can be algebraically described as certain morphisms in the category of tangles in 3 dimensions, compact surfaces smoothly embedded in R 4 can be described as certain 2-morphisms in the 2-category of ‘2-tangles in 4 dimensions’. Using the work of Carter, Rieger and Saito, we prove that this 2-category is the ‘free semistrict braided monoidal 2-category with duals on one unframed self-dual object’. By this universal property, any unframed self-dual object in a braided monoidal 2-category with duals determines an invariant of 2-tangles in 4 dimensions. 1

A 2-group is a ‘categorified ’ version of a group, in which the underlying set G has been replaced by a category and the multiplication map m: G×G → G has been replaced by a functor. Various versions of this notion have already been explored; our goal here is to provide a detailed introduction to two, which we call ‘weak ’ and ‘coherent ’ 2-groups. A weak 2-group is a weak monoidal category in which every morphism has an inverse and every object x has a ‘weak inverse’: an object y such that x ⊗ y ∼ = 1 ∼ = y ⊗ x. A coherent 2-group is a weak 2-group in which every object x is equipped with a specified weak inverse ¯x and isomorphisms ix: 1 → x ⊗ ¯x, ex: ¯x ⊗ x → 1 forming an adjunction. We describe 2-categories of weak and coherent 2-groups and an ‘improvement ’ 2-functor that turns weak 2-groups into coherent ones, and prove that this 2-functor is a 2-equivalence of 2-categories. We internalize the concept of coherent 2-group, which gives a quick way to define Lie 2-groups. We give a tour of examples, including the ‘fundamental 2-group ’ of a space and various Lie 2-groups. We also explain how coherent 2-groups can be classified in terms of 3rd cohomology classes in group cohomology. Finally, using this classification, we construct for any connected and simply-connected compact simple Lie group G a family of 2-groups G � ( � ∈ Z) having G as its group of objects and U(1) as the group of automorphisms of its identity object. These 2-groups are built using Chern–Simons theory, and are closely related to the Lie 2-algebras g � ( � ∈ R) described in a companion paper. 1 1

Let X be a topological space and G an abelian group. There are many different definitions for the cohomology group H n (X; G); we will single out three of them for discussion here. First of all, we have the singular cohomology groups H n sing (X; G), which are defined to be cohomology of a chain complex of G-valued singular cochains on X. An alternative is to regard H n (•, G) as a representable functor on the homotopy category

Stacks were introduced by Grothendieck and Giraud and are, roughly speaking, sheaves of categories. Kashiwara developed the theory of twisted modules, which are objects of stacks locally equivalent to stacks of modules over sheaves of rings. In this paper we recall these notions, and we develop the formalism of operations for stacks of twisted modules. As an application, we state a twisted version of an adjunction formula which is of use in the theory of integral transforms for sheaves and D-modules.

The purpose of this paper is to work out the categorical basis for the foundations of Conformal Field Theory. The definition of Conformal Field Theory was outlined in Segal [45] and recently given in [24] and [25]. Concepts of 2-category theory, such as versions of algebra, limit, colimit, and adjunction, are necessary for this

Abstract. We give a natural obstruction theoretic interpretation to the first Pontryagin class in terms of Courant algebroids. As an application we calculate the class of the stack of algebras of chiral differential operators. In particular, we establish the existence and uniqueness of the chiral de Rham complex.

Abstract. Let X be a smooth algebraic variety over a field of characteristic 0. We introduce the notion of twisted associative (resp. Poisson) deformation of the structure sheaf OX. These are stack-like versions of usual deformations. We prove that there is a twisted quantization map from twisted Poisson deformations to twisted associative deformations, which is canonical and bijective on equivalence classes.