Modern Trends in Topological Quantum Field Theory, Vienna, February 2014

Abstract. I will describe a semi-rigorous reduction of perturbative BF theory (Cattaneo-Rossi arXiv:math-ph/0210037) to computable combinatorics, in the case of ribbon 2-links. Also, I will explain how and why my approach may or may not work in the non-ribbon case. Weak this result is, and at least partially already known (Watanabe arXiv:math/0609742). Yet in the ribbon case, the resulting invariant is a universal finite type invariant, a gadget that significantly generalizes and clarifies the Alexander polynomial and that is closely related to the Kashiwara-Vergne problem. I cannot rule out the possibility that the corresponding gadget in the non-ribbon case will be as interesting.

Handout: BF2C.html, BF2C.pdf, BF2C.png. There's also a handout booklet: ViennaBooklet.pdf.
Talk video:

Sources: pensieve.