Diagrammatics for Coxeter groups and their braid groups (Q2406850): Difference between revisions

A group acting on a category is, roughly speaking, an assignment of a functor for each element of the group. This can be thought of as a categorification of the usual notion of a group representation. The primary goal of this paper is to give an explicit criterion for establishing a strict action of a Coxeter group or its braid group on a category, extending the Coxeter presentation of the said group. The secondary goal is to provide diagrammatic tools for the study of Coxeter groups and braid groups. For a group \(G\), let \(\Omega G\) be the monoidal category whose objects consist of the set \(G\) and the only morphisms are identity maps \(\mathrm{id}_{g}\) for each \(g\in G\). The monoidal structure on objects is given by the group structure on \(G\), and the monoidal structure on morphisms is uniquely determined. Given a category \(\mathcal{C}\), let \(\mathrm{Aut}(\mathcal{C})\) denote the monoidal category whose objects are autoequivalences of \(\mathcal{C}\) and whose morphisms are invertible natural transformations. The monoidal structure is given by composition of functors. A strict group action of \(G\) on a category \(\mathcal{C}\) is a monoidal functor \(\Omega G \rightarrow \mathrm{Aut}(\mathcal{C})\). Let \((W, S)\) be a Coxeter system and let \(B_{W}\) be the corresponding Artin braid group. Let \(\mathcal{B}_{\mathrm{diag}}\) and \(\mathcal{W}_{\mathrm{diag}}\) be two appropriately defined monoidal categories (see Definition 1.14 in the paper; \(\mathcal{W}_{\mathrm{diag}}\) is simply \(\mathcal{B}_{\mathrm{diag}}\) without any orientation). Then, the obvious monoidal functors \(\mathcal{B}_{\mathrm{diag}} \rightarrow \Omega B_{W}\) is an equivalence of categories (Theorem 1.17) and the obvious monoidal functors \(\mathcal{W}_{\mathrm{diag}} \rightarrow \Omega W\) is an equivalence of categories (Theorem 1.20). This interesting paper is enriched by many remarks, examples and even exercises.