The term “cohomological field theory” is mostly used for the “Witten style” topological quantum field theories which arise from a topological twist of a supersymmetric quantum field theory, notable example being the A-model and the B-model topological string.
Mathematically these topological field theories came to be known as TCFTs. With the proof of the cobordism hypothesis these were understood to be the “non-compact” 2-dimensional extended TQFTs with codomain an (infinity,1)-category of chain complexes, where “non-compact” refers to all cobordisms being required to have non-empty outgoing boundary.
For more on all this see at TCFT and at 2d TQFT.
Last revised on December 5, 2019 at 23:58:26. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.