Speaker: Zhenghan Wang (Microsoft Research Station Q)

Title: Classification of (2+1)-TQFTs and its applications to physics and quantum computation

Time/Date: 4:30-6:00, Mon., February 23, 2015

Room: 122

Abstract: We classify Reshetikhin-Tuarev (2+1)-TQFTs, not necessarily fully extended, by classifying their modular tensor categories. A recent proof of the rank-finiteness conjecture for modular tensor categories by P. Bruillard, S.-H. Ng, E. Rowell and myself implies that in principle we can list all modular tensor categories of a given rank. I will outline a proof of rank-finiteness first, and then discuss applications to topological phases of matter and topological quantum computation.