Inner products of 2-representations (Q887305)

The author and \textit{M. Kapranov} [Adv. Math. 217, No. 5, 2268--2300 (2008; Zbl 1136.18001)] defined and studied characters of group representations in \(2\)-categories. Let us recall briefly what the objects of study are. If \(\mathcal C\) is a \(2\)-category, a \(2\)-representation of a group \(G\) on an object \(V\) of \(\mathcal C\) consists in \(1\)-endomorphisms \(\rho(g)\) for all group elements \(g\) such that composition and identity hold up to given \(2\)-isomorphisms. The focus is on \(2\)-representations on a \(k\)-linear category \(V\). The categorical character of such a \(2\)-representation is its categorical trace, which is defined as the \(2\)-homomorphisms from the identity to \(\rho(g)\). It consists, in the linear case, in vector spaces \(X_\rho (g)\) together with conjugation isomorphisms \(X_\rho (g) \rightarrow X_\rho (sgs^{-1})\). The first part of the article establishes multiplicativity of the trace with respect to (various) tensor products, which translates here in the fact that the representations \(X_\rho \otimes X_\pi\) and \(X_{\rho \boxtimes \pi}\) are isomorphic. The main contribution comes in Section 5 where the following classical formula is generalized to a \(2\)-categorical setup. If \(\rho: G \rightarrow \mathrm{GL}(V)\) is a \(k\)-linear representation of \(G\), then \(\dim (V^G) = \dfrac{1}{|G|} \sum \chi_\rho(g)\). For this one has to replace fixed points by categorical fixed points \(V^G\), which are given by the category of equivariant objects. Its dimension or center is a \(k\)-algebra that is shown to be isomorphic to the \(G\)-fixed points of the twisted group algebra. Applications range from Schur's classical result about irreducible projective representations to orbifold Hochschild cohomology.