Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Mathematics, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 23, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-108). Also issued in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2009. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Mathematics, June 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The spin^c-invariants for a compact smooth simply-connected oriented four-manifold, as defined by Pidstrigach and Tyurin, are studied in this thesis. Unlike the Donaldson polynomial invariants, they are defined by cutting down the moduli space M' of '1-instantons', which is the subspace of the moduli space M of anti-self-dual connections parametrizing coupled (spin^c) Dirac operators with non-trivial kernel. Our main goal is to study the relationship between these spin^c-invariants and the Donaldson polynomial invariants. The 'jumping subset' M' defined a cohomology class P of M which is given by the generalised Porteous formula. When the index l of the coupled Dirac operator is 1, the two smooth invariants are the same by definition. When l = 0 (or when M is compact), the spin^c-invariants are expressable as a Donaldson polynomial evaluating the 'Porteous class' P. Our main results concern the first two non-trivial cases l = -1 and -2, when the generalised Porteous formula can not be applied directly. Using cut-and-paste arguments to the moduli space M, we show that for the former case the spin^c-invariants and the contracted Donaldson invariants differ by a correction term. It is the number of points in the immediate lower stratum of the Uhlenbeck compactification times a universal 'linking invariant' on S⁴, which is obtained by computing an example (the K3 surface). The case when l = -2 and dimM = 8 is a parametrized version of the l = -1 situation and the correction term, which involves the same 'linking invariant', is obtained from a suitable obstruction theory.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. Mathematics, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 24, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-41). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-69). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: Ian Hambleton. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-112). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-135).

A fully extended framed topological field theory with target in a symmetric monoidal n-catgeory C is a symmetric monoidal functor Z from Bord(n) to C, where Bord(n) is the symmetric monoidal n-category of n-framed bordisms. The cobordism hypothesis says that such field theories are classified by fully dualizable objects in C. Given a fully dualizable object X in C, we are interested in computing the values of the corresponding field theory on specific framed bordisms. This leads to the question of finding a presentation for Bord(n). In view of the cobordism hypothesis, this can be rephrased in terms of finding coherence data for fully dualizable objects in a symmetric monoidal n-category. We prove a characterization of full dualizability of an object X in terms of existence of a dual of X and existence of adjoints for a finite number of higher morphisms. This reduces the problem of finding coherence data for fully dualizable objects to that of finding coherence data for duals and adjoints. For n=3, and in the setting of strict symmetric monoidal 3-categories, we find this coherence data, and we prove the corresponding coherence theorems. The proofs rely on extensive use of a graphical calculus for strict monoidal 3-categories.