Tortile tensor categories (Q1321051)

A tortile tensor category is a braided tensor category in which every object is equipped with a twist automorphism and a dual, subject to some straightforward axioms. This paper gives an explicit geometric model for the free tortile tensor category on a given category -- it is the category of tangles on ribbons labelled by arrows of the given category. This result and the author's clear exposition (with beautiful diagrams) are a showpiece for the mathematical directions, initiated by Aitchison, Joyal, Yetter, Freyd, Turaev and the reviewer, connecting categorical structures with precise concepts from low-dimensional topology.