A new approach to the representation theory of the partition category (Q2122223)

The authors explain a new approach to the representation theory of the partition category based on a reformulation of the definition of the Jucys-Murphy elements. Their reformulation involves a new graphical monoidal category, called the affine partition category, which is defined as a certain monoidal subcategory of Khovanov's Heisenberg category. The authors use the Jucys-Murphy elements to construct some special projective functors, and then apply these functors to give self-contained proofs of certain blocks of Deligne's category \(\underline{\text{Rep}}(S_t)\). That is, letting \(\mathbf{k}\) to be an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero and \(t\in \mathbf{k}\) a parameter, the partition category \(\mathcal{P}ar_t\) is the free strict \(\mathbf{k}\)-linear symmetric monoidal category generated by a special commutative Frobenius object of categorical dimension \(t\). Its additive Karoubi envelope is the category \(\underline{\text{Rep}}(S_t)\) introduced by \textit{P. Deligne} [in: Algebraic groups and homogeneous spaces. Proceedings of the international colloquium, Mumbai, India, January 6--14, 2004. New Delhi: Narosa Publishing House/Published for the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. 209--273 (2007; Zbl 1165.20300)]. When \(t \notin \mathbb{N}\), Deligne's category is a semisimple tensor category which does not admit a fiber functor. When \(t \in \mathbb{N}\), the category \(\underline{\text{Rep}}(S_t)\) is not semisimple, and its semisimplification is the usual tensor category \(\mathbf{k} S_t\)-\(\text{Mod}_{\text{fd}}\) of representations of the symmetric group. When \(t \in \mathbb{N}\), the nonsimple blocks of \(\mathcal{P}ar_t\) are in bijection with isomorphism classes of irreducibles in the semisimplification \(\mathbf{k} S_t\)-\(\text{Mod}_{\text{fd}}\). All of the nonsimple blocks are Morita equivalent. These blocks have infinitely-many isomorphism classes of irreducible modules parametrized by the natural number \(\mathbb{N}\), and the structure of the corresponding indecomposable projectives is given diagrammatically. It is straightforward to check that each nonsimple block is Morita equivalent to the path algebra of certain infinite quiver with relations.