Turaev-Viro invariants as an extended TQFT III

Abstract

In the third paper in this series, we examine the Reshetikhin-Turaev and Turaev-Viro TQFTs at the level of surfaces. In particular, we show that for a closed surface $\Sigma$, $Z_{TV, \mathcal{C}}(\Sigma) \cong Z_{RT, Z(\C)}(\Sigma)$, thus extending the equality of 3-manifold invariants proved in an earlier paper to an equivalence of TQFTs. We also describe how to compute Turaev-Viro state sums for 3-manifolds with embedded ribbon graphs.