Symmetric Khovanov-Rozansky link homologies (Q2184859)

The paper extends the authors' combinatorial evaluation of foams for the exterior Khovanov-Rozansky link homologies to those for the symmetric powers of the standard representation of quantum \(\mathfrak{sl}_N\). The evaluation provides a down to earth treatment of the symmetric Khovanov-Rozansky link homologies (with coefficients in \(\mathbb{Q}\)) similar to the Khovanov's original one, and categorifies the corresponding Reshetikhin-Turaev link invariants. For dimensional reasons, the extension is impossible in the original general setting, and the authors restrict to braid closures in the annular setting, where there is a symmetric analog of the Murakami-Ohtsuki-Yamada (MOY) planar graphic calculus developed by \textit{H. Queffelec}, \textit{D. E. V. Rose} and \textit{A. Sartori} [``Annular evaluation and link homology'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1802.04131}]. The main result is that there is a finite-dimensional categorification of the symmetric MOY calculus that yields a categorification of the Reshetikhin-Turaev link invariants for the symmetric powers of the standard representation of quantum \(\mathfrak{sl}_N\). It is functorial with respect to the braid-like movie moves, and differs from the Khovanov-Rozansky categorification for the standard representation itself. While the construction itself is combinatorial, the proof of invariance requires the use of Soergel bimodules. The authors generalize Cautis's construction of the additional differential on the Hochschild homology of Soergel bimodules to the equivariant setting, and construct the homology using the Rickard complexes. As in the exterior case, there is a spectral sequence converging to the symmetric Khovanov-Rozansky link homology with the first page given by the (unreduced) triply graded link homology. As for stabilization of the latter, \(2\) has to be inverted, which explains the use of rational coefficients.