Extended Structures in Topological Quantum Field Theory

Abstract

In this note, based on a conference talk, we show how a 3 dimensional topological field theory leads to an algebraic gadget roughly equivalent to a quantum group. This is an expository version of some material in hep-th/9212115 (where we also carry out computations for a specific finite example). We also explain how to incorporate the central extensions usually explained via ``framings'', and we show how to recover invariants of framed tangles. This paper is written using AMSTeX 2.1, which can be obtained via ftp from the American Mathematical Society (instructions included). 2 encapsulated postscript files were submitted separately in uuencoded tar-compressed format.