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The embedded cobordism category under study in this paper generalizes the category of conformal surfaces, introduced by G. Segal in [S2] in order to formalize the concept of field theories. Our main result identifies the homotopy type of the classifying space of the embedded$d$-dimensional cobordism category for all$d$. For$d$= 2, our results lead to a new proof of the generalized Mumford conjecture, somewhat different in spirit from the original one, presented in [MW].

No abstract uploaded!

No abstract uploaded!

We prove that there is a unique way to construct a geometric scale of Hilbert spaces interpolating between two given spaces. We investigate what properties of operators, other than boundedness, are preserved by interpolation. We show that self-adjointness is, but subnormality and Krein subnormality are not. On the way to this last result, we establish a representation theorem for cyclic Krein subnormal operators.