Reflections on topological quantum field theory

The aim of this article is to introduce some basic notions of topological quantum field theory (TQFT) and to consider a modification of TQFT, applicable to embedded manifolds. After an introduction based around a simple example (Section 1), the notion of a d-dimensional TQFT is defined in category-theoretical terms, as a certain type of functor from a category of d-dimensional cobordisms to the category of vector spaces (Section 2). A construction due to Turaev, an operator-valued invariant of tangles, is discussed in Section 3. It bears a strong resemblance to 1-dimensional TQFTs, but carries much richer structure due to the fact that the 1-dimensional manifolds involved are embedded in a 3-dimensional space. This leads us, in Section 4, to propose a class of TQFT-like theories, appropriate to embedded, rather than pure, manifolds.