A topological three-dimensional quantum field theory of gravity Seminar

Quantum gravity seeks to describe gravitational force according to the principles of quantum mechanics. In the late 80's, Atiyah gave an axiomatic formulation to construct quantum field theories in physics. This formulation seems to give an appropriate mathematical framework to develop a theory of quantum gravity. In this talk I will give an introduction to the Atiyah's paper on Topological quantum field theories. I will also describe the state sum invariants of 3-manifolds whose construction is based on combinatorial methods. At the end I will show that this approach to constructing new invariants is a topological quantum field theory in three dimensions.