Functorial Knot Theory: Categories Of Tangles, Coherence, Categorical Deformations And Topological Invariants

Download or read book Functorial Knot Theory: Categories Of Tangles, Coherence, Categorical Deformations And Topological Invariants written by David N Yetter and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2001-04-16 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost since the advent of skein-theoretic invariants of knots and links (the Jones, HOMFLY, and Kauffman polynomials), the important role of categories of tangles in the connection between low-dimensional topology and quantum-group theory has been recognized. The rich categorical structures naturally arising from the considerations of cobordisms have suggested functorial views of topological field theory.This book begins with a detailed exposition of the key ideas in the discovery of monoidal categories of tangles as central objects of study in low-dimensional topology. The focus then turns to the deformation theory of monoidal categories and the related deformation theory of monoidal functors, which is a proper generalization of Gerstenhaber's deformation theory of associative algebras. These serve as the building blocks for a deformation theory of braided monoidal categories which gives rise to sequences of Vassiliev invariants of framed links, and clarify their interrelations.