From the theory of gapless boundaries of 2+1D topological orders to topological Wick rotationConfirmed

by Liang Kong (Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech))

Thursday Jun 4, 2026, 2:00 PM → 4:00 PM America/Toronto

PI/4-405 - Bob Room (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

In this talk, I will review the unified mathematical theory of gapped and gapless boundaries of 2+1D topological orders developed in arXiv:1705.01087. As a consequence of this theory, we will derive a surprising result called “topological Wick rotation”, which was proposed to generalize to higher dimensions as a general principle for certain nice QFTs (arXiv:1905.04924). I will also talk about various  generalizations and applications of topological Wick rotation. In particular, I will show how it includes the usual topological holography and sandwich construction as a special case.