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A gapped quantum system is well-approximated at low energy by a projective topological field theory. Therefore questions concerning the classification, symmetries, and anomalies of gapped quantum systems can be reinterpreted via the homotopy theory of the moduli space of such theories. I will describe a moduli space of 3-dimensional TQFTs, and the sense in which its homotopy theory informs us about the low energy behavior of gapped systems in 2+1 dimensions.

In Appendix C of his "Anyons" paper, Kitaev introduced the notion of a "generalized Chern number" for a 2-dimensional system by diving the system in three ordered parts and measuring a signed rotational flux. This construction has since been used by several authors to measure topological non-triviality of a physical system. In recent work with Guo Chuan Thiang, we observe that the recipe provided by Kitaev can be interpreted in coarse geometry as the pairing of a K-theory class with a coarse cohomology class.

As originally suggested by Kitaev, invertible topological quantum field theories of varying dimensions should assemble into a spectrum/generalized homology theory. A candidate for such a spectrum of invertible TQFTs was proposed by Freed and Hopkins, with the defining property that (isomorphism classes of) n-dimensional invertible TQFTs are completely determined by their partition functions on closed n-manifolds.

More generally, not-necessarily-invertible TQFTs should assemble into a `categorical spectrum', an analogue of a spectrum with non-invertible cells at each level.

Quinn's Finite Total Homotopy TQFT is a topological quantum field theory defined for any dimension n of space, depending on the choice of a homotopy finite space B. For instance, B can be the classifying space of a finite group or a finite 2-group.