Categorical Center of Higher Genera and 4D Factorization Homology

Abstract

Many quantum invariants of knots and 3-manifolds (e.g. Jones polynomials) are special cases of the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev 3D TQFT. The latter is in turn a part of a larger theory - the Crane-Yetter 4D TQFT. In this work, we compute the Crane-Yetter theory for all (smooth and oriented) surfaces with at least one puncture. The results in general are constructed and called the categorical center of higher genera.