BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:researchseminars.org CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:researchseminars.org BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Jack Romö (University of Leeds) DTSTART:20250827T160000Z DTEND:20250827T170000Z DTSTAMP:20260423T024655Z UID:TQFT/146 DESCRIPTION:Title: H omotopy bicategories of $(\\infty\,2)$-categories\nby Jack Romö (Univ ersity of Leeds) as part of Topological Quantum Field Theory Club (IST\, L isbon)\n\n\nAbstract\nAcross the multitude of definitions for a higher cat egory\, a dividing line can be found between two major camps of model. On one side lives the ‘algebraic’ models\, like Bénabou’s bicategories \, tricategories following Gurski and the models of Batanin and Leinster\, Trimble and Penon. On the other end\, one finds the ‘non-algebraic’ m odels\, including more homotopy-theoretic ones like quasicategories\, Sega l n-categories\, complete n-fold Segal spaces and more. The bridges betwee n these models remain somewhat mysterious. Progress has been made in certa in instances\, as seen in the work of Tamsamani\, Leinster\, Lack and Paol i\, Cottrell\, Campbell\, Nikolaus and others. Developing comparisons betw een these forms of higher category has relevance to topological quantum fi eld theories in relating the work done on fully extended TQFTs using homot opy theoretic models of higher category\, such as Lurie's proof-sketch of the Cobordism Hypothesis conducted using n-fold Segal spaces\, and the lar ge body of work on extended TQFTs using algebraic models of higher categor y\, such as symmetric monoidal bicategories.\n\nNonetheless\, the correspo ndence remains incomplete\; indeed\, for instance\, there is no fully veri fied means in the literature to take an 'algebraic’ homotopy n-category of any known model of $(\\infty\, n)$-category for general n. One might se e this as an extension of the fundamental n-groupoid of a homotopy type\, a statement I will make precise. In this talk\, I will explore current wor k in the problem of taking homotopy bicategories of non-algebraic $(\\inft y\, 2)$-categories\, including a construction of my own. If time permits\, I will discuss the connections of this problem to topological quantum fie ld theories.\n LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/TQFT/146/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR