University of Chicago
Department of Mathematics

Cancelled

In this talk, I will talk about mathematically rigorous definitions of modular functors and conformal field theories. One of the main issues in giving such a definition is the problem of capturing all the structures present on the moduli stack of surfaces with boundary components. To this end, I define a formalism of stacks of commutative monoids with cancellation (SLCMCs), which makes use of Lawvere's notion of theories, as well as those of 2-categories and 2-vector spaces. In particular, I will rigorously define open/closed conformal field theories with general anomaly.