Boundary conditions and defects of any codimension are natural parts of any quantum field theory. Surface defects in three-dimensional topological field theories of Turaev-Reshetikhin type have applications to two-dimensional conformal field theories
, in solid state physics and in quantum computing. We explain an obstruction to the existence of surface defects that takes values in a Witt group. We then turn to surface defects in Dijkgraaf-Witten theories and their construction in terms of relative bundles; this allows one to exhibit Brauer-Picard groups as symmetry groups of three-dimensional topological field theories.
We study a 2-functor that assigns to a bimodule category over a finite k-linear tensor category a k-linear abelian category. This 2-functor can be regarded as a category-valued trace for 1-morphisms in the tricategory of finite tensor categories. It
is defined by a universal property that is a categorification of Hochschild homology of bimodules over an algebra. We present several equivalent realizations of this 2-functor and show that it has a coherent cyclic invariance. Our results have applications to categories associated to circles in three-dimensional topological field theories with defects. This is made explicit for the subclass of Dijkgraaf-Witten topological field theories.
Given a Hopf algebra $H$ and a projection $Hto A$ to a Hopf subalgebra, we construct a Hopf algebra $r(H)$, called the partial dualization of $H$, with a projection to the Hopf algebra dual to $A$. This construction provides powerful techniques in th
e general setting of braided monoidal categories. The construction comprises in particular the reflections of generalized quantum groups, arxiv:1111.4673 . We prove a braided equivalence between the Yetter-Drinfeld modules over a Hopf algebra and its partial dualization.
Given a bundle gerbe on a compact smooth manifold or, more generally, on a compact etale Lie groupoid $M$, we show that the corresponding category of gerbe modules, if it is non-trivial, is equivalent to the category of finitely generated projective
modules over an Azumaya algebra on $M$. This result can be seen as an equivariant Serre-Swan theorem for twisted vector bundles.
