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GGT seminar: A complexity-theoretic dichotomy for TQFT invariants

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Groups, Geometry, and Topology Seminar
Location
347 Altgeld Hall
Date
Mar 6, 2025   11:00 am - 12:00 pm  
Speaker
Eric Samperton (Purdue Math & CS)

Topological quantum computation (and related matters in condensed matter theory) stimulates a number of complexity-theoretic questions concerning TQFT invariants, especially for 3-dimensional manifolds.  I’ll begin by reviewing some of these and the motivations.  Then, as an easy application of a major result of Cai and Chen [J. ACM, 2017], I’ll prove the following: for any fixed 3-manifold invariant of either Reshetikhin-Turaev or Turaev-Viro-Barrett-Westbury type, there is either a polynomial time algorithm to compute the invariant (on all triangulated 3-manifolds) or it is #P-hard.  I’ll conclude by opining on the ways one might turn this “in principle” dichotomy into an “effective” dichotomy.  This is joint work with Nicolas Bridges.

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