Combinatorial skeletons of 2-cobordism and annular categories with applications to equational logic

Abstract

We introduce a complete set of combinatorial data that encode the category $2\mathfrak{Cob}$ of all $2$-cobordisms. As an application, we show that the local monoids of $2\mathfrak{Cob}$ do not have finitely axiomatizable equational theories. As yet another application, we construct a von-Neumann-regular extension of this category. Similar results are provided for the topological annular category and various quotients of the latter, like the affine Temperley--Lieb category.

Version 2 is radically reworked and substantially extended and should therefore be considered essentially a new paper. 95 pages, 13 numbered figures and many unnumbered illustrations, 1 table