A diagrammatic categorification of the \(q\)-Schur algebra (Q1932682)

These notes could be considered as a continuation of the program initiated by I. Frenkel on categorification of quantum groups and their representations. Precisely, the authors construct a diagrammatic \(2\)-category as a quotient of the diagrammatic \(2\)-category \(\mathcal{U}(\mathfrak{sl}_{n})\) given by \textit{M. Khovanov} and \textit{A. D. Lauda} [Quantum Topol. 1, No. 1, 1--92 (2010); erratum ibid. 2, No. 1, 97--99 (2011; Zbl 1206.17015)], whose Grothendieck ring is isomorphic to the \(q\)-Schur algebra \({S}_{q}(n,d)\). To achieve this, the \(q\)-Schur algebra \({S}_{q}(n,d)\) is first described as a quotient of both Lusztig idempotented versions of \(U_{q}(\mathfrak{sl}_{n})\) and \(U_{q}(\mathfrak{gl}_{n})\). Note that the \(2\)-category \(\mathcal{U}(\mathfrak{sl}_{n})\) categorifies the idempotented version of \(U_{q}(\mathfrak{sl}_{n})\). Then, the \(2\)-category \(\mathcal{U}(\mathfrak{gl}_{n})\) is defined as \(\mathcal{U}(\mathfrak{sl}_{n})\) but using \(\mathfrak{gl}_{n}\)-weights instead of \(\mathfrak{sl}_{n}\)-weights. The \(2\)-category \(\mathcal{S}(n,d)\) that categorifies \(S_{q}(n,d)\) is then obtained as a quotient of \(\mathcal{U}(\mathfrak{gl}_{n})\) by some weights not appearing in the \(d\)-tensor power of the natural representation \(V\) of \(GL(n,\mathbb{Q})\). As a byproduct, the authors prove some other interesting results. Among them, they define a fully faithfull \(2\)-functor from Soergel's category of bimodules to \(\mathcal{S}(n,d)\), which categorifies the inclusion of the Hecke algebra into the \(q\)-Schur algebra for \(n\geq d\), and show that Khovanov and Lauda's \(2\)-representation of \(\mathcal{U}(\mathfrak{sl}_{n})\) on the equivariant cohomology of flag varieties descends to \(\mathcal{S}(n,d)\). It is also conjectured how to categorify the irreducible representations of \(S_{q}(n,d)\) using \(\mathcal{S}(n,d)\).