The twisted Drinfeld double (or quasi-quantum double) of a finite group with a 3-cocycle is identified with a certain twisted groupoid algebra. The groupoid is the loop (or inertia) groupoid of the original group and the twisting is shown geometrically to be the loop transgression of the 3-cocycle. The twisted representation theory of finite groupoids is developed and used to derive properties of the Drinfeld double, such as representations being classified by their characters. This is all motivated by gerbes and 3-dimensional quantum field theory. In particular the representation category of the twisted Drinfeld double is viewed as the "space of sections" associated to a transgressed gerbe over the loop groupoid.

The magnitude of a graph can be thought of as an integer power series associated to a graph; Leinster introduced it using his idea of magnitude of a metric space. Here we introduce a bigraded homology theory for graphs which has the magnitude as its graded Euler characteristic. This is a categorification of the magnitude in the same spirit as Khovanov homology is a categorification of the Jones polynomial. We show how properties of magnitude proved by Leinster categorify to properties such as a Künneth Theorem and a Mayer-Vietoris Theorem. We prove that joins of graphs have their homology supported on the diagonal. Finally, we give various computer calculated examples.2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 55N35, 05C31.

Magnitude is a canonical invariant of finite metric spaces which has its origins in category theory; it is analogous to cardinality of finite sets. Here, by approximating certain compact subsets of Euclidean space with finite subsets, the magnitudes of line segments, circles and Cantor sets are defined and calculated. It is observed that asymptotically these satisfy the inclusion-exclusion principle, relating them to intrinsic volumes of polyconvex sets.Comment: 23 pages. Version 2: updated to reflect more recent work, in particular, the approximation method is now known to calculate (rather than merely define) the magnitude; also minor alterations such as references adde

In this paper we calculate the magnitude of metric spaces using measures rather than finite subsets as had been done previously. An explicit formula for the magnitude of an n-sphere with its intrinsic metric is given. For an arbitrary homogeneous Riemannian manifold the leading terms of the asymptotic expansion of the magnitude are calculated and expressed in terms of the volume and total scalar curvature of the manifold.

For smooth finite dimensional manifolds, we characterise gerbes with connection as functors on a certain surface cobordism category. This allows us to relate gerbes with connection to Turaev's 1+1-dimensional homotopy quantum field theories, and we show that flat gerbes are related to a specific class of rank one homotopy quantum field theories.