Extended Functorial Field Theories and Anomalies in Quantum Field Theories

Understand

We develop a general framework for the description of anomalies using extended functorial field theories extending previous work by Freed and Monnier.

• In this framework, anomalies are described by invertible field theories in one dimension higher and anomalous field theories live on their boundaries.
• We provide precise mathematical definitions for all concepts involved using the language of symmetric monoidal bicategories.
• In particular, field theories with anomalies will be described by symmetric monoidal transformations.