Sophia Marx
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Title
From simplicial sets to pseudobimonoids (and beyond!): Producing associative algebras and Span-valued TQFT's from 2-Segal sets
Abstract
This talk is designed as an accessible introduction to the correspondence between 2-Segal simplicial sets, which can be thought of as encoding a kind of weak associativity, and coherent algebra objects in the bicategory Span, a theorem which applies algebraic topology and (higher) category theory to the study of TQFT. We’ll discuss and allude to several natural extensions of this correspondence, adding further structure to our simplicial sets and discovering the kinds of algebraic structures they produce. This talk is based on recent work (joint with R. Mehta, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.24887), and builds on previous results by Ivan Contreras, Rajan Mehta, and Walker Stern, among others.
