arXiv subjects

Chetan Vuppulury

Publications and source records attributed to Chetan Vuppulury.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Invertible projective 2-representations from invertible 2d TQFTs with defects

We investigate invertible projective representations and their 2-categorical analogues using the language of TQFTs with defects. The main result is a freeness property for invertible projective representatios. While trivial in the 1-categorical setting, this result becomes interesting for 2-representations: as an application, only relying only on invertibility of Clifford algebras and Fock bimodules in the Morita 2-category of super vector spaces we recover Ludewig--Roos' result that the Clifford/Fock construction is a projective 2-representation of the category of Lagrangian correspondences.

math.CT↗

arXiv2026

Projective and anomalous representations of categories and their linearizations

We invesigate the relation between projective and anomalous representations of categories, and show how to any anomaly $J\colon \mathcal{C}\to 2\mathrm{Vect}$ one can associate an extension $\mathcal{C}^J$ of $\mathcal{C}$ and a subcategory $\mathcal{C}^J_{\mathrm{ST}}$ of $\mathcal{C}^J$ with the property that: (i) anomalous representations of $\mathcal{C}$ with anomaly $J$ are equivalent to $\mathrm{Vect}$-linear functors $E\colon \mathcal{C}^J\to \mathrm{Vect}$, and (ii) these are in turn equivalent to linear representations of $\mathcal{C}^J_{\mathrm{ST}}$ where "$J$ acts as scalars". This construction, inspired by and generalizing the technique used to linearize anomalous functorial field theories in the physics literature, can be seen as a multi-object version of the classical relation between projective representations of a group $G$, with given $2$-cocycle $α$, and linear representations of the central extension $G^α$ of $G$ associated with $α$.

math.CT↗

arXiv2025

Dagger $n$-categories

Category theory provides a unified language for organizing composable operations in many disciplines. In disciplines where unitarity is fundamental -- such as functional analysis, quantum field theory, and quantum logic -- this language must also capture adjoints, leading to the notion of dagger categories. Higher category theory, which extends this framework to encode operations between operations, has recently become indispensable in both theoretical physics and pure mathematics. Finding a higher categorical analogue of a dagger category is therefore key to the foundations of quantum field theory. In this work, we present a coherent definition of \emph{dagger $(\infty,n)$-category} in terms of equivariance data trivialized on parts of the category. Our main example is the bordism $(\infty,n)$-category $\mathbf{Bord}_{n}^X$. This allows us to define (fully-local) \emph{reflection-positive topological quantum field theories} to be higher dagger functors out of $\mathbf{Bord}_{n}^X$.

math.CT↗

arXiv2025

Higher tensor categories and their extensions: notes from the Scottish Talbot On Algebra and Topology

These lecture notes are the product of a week-long learning workshop on the work of Johnson-Freyd and Reutter on the problem of the existence of minimal nondegenerate extensions of braided fusion categories (arXiv:2105.15167). They recount the mathematical arguments of the original paper from an expository angle, with background material covering the algebra and homotopy theory required to understand the statement and follow the proof. The notes are aimed at newcomers to the field of (braided) fusion 1- and 2-categories.

math.QA↗