A topological origin of quantum symmetric pairs (Q2316025)

The aim of this paper is to study the representation theoric properties of quantum symmetric pairs, in particular universal \(K\)-matrices, from the perspective of (topological) operads. A (twisted) universal \(K\)-matrix of a coideal subalgebra \(B \subset H\) of a quasitriangular Hopf algebra \(H\) is an element \(K \in B \otimes H\) that provides a `universal' solution to a (twisted) reflection equation; an analgoue of the Yang--Baxter equation. Similarly to the latter, it has a categorical interpretation. In the current paper, this is treated by the so-called \(\mathbb Z_2\)-braided pairs. These consist of \begin{itemize} \item[1.] a braided monoidal category \(\mathcal A\), \item[2.] a braided monoidal functor \(\Phi \colon \mathcal A \to \mathcal A^{\otimes-\text{op}}\), \item[3.] a right module category \(\mathcal M\) over \(\mathcal A\), and \item[4.] a cylinder braiding \(\kappa_{M,X} \colon M \triangleleft X \to M \triangleleft \Phi(X)\), where \(M \in \mathcal M\) and \(X \in \mathcal A\). \end{itemize} Examples of \(\mathbb Z_2\)-braided pairs arise from quantum symmetric pairs, see Proposition~3.5 and Corollary~1.8. Section~4 establishes coherence-by-strictification for such pairs, which allows for an operadic description of the combinatorics of such categories. This operad , called the \emph{involutive little disks operad} \(\mathbb Z_2 \mathbb D_2\), is introduced in Section~2. It is a coloured, topological operad whose spaces of operations are given by rectilinear embeddings of little disks into an `ambient' disk which commute with certain \(\mathbb Z_2\) actions. In Section~5 it is shown that the categorical algebras of \(\mathbb Z_2 \mathbb D_2\) are precisely the \(\mathbb Z_2\)-braided pairs. More precisely, the (2,1)-category \(Rex\) is considered. It consists of \(\mathbb k\)-linear essentially small categories that admit finite colimits, with right exact functors as 1-morphisms and natural isomorphisms as 2-morphisms. The \(\mathbb Z_2\)-braided pairs contained in \(Rex\) are called \emph{\(\mathbb Z_2\)-braided tensor pairs}. Proposition 5.19 shows that any \(\mathbb Z_2 \mathbb D_2\)-algebra in \(Rex\) gives rise to a \(\mathbb Z_2\)-braided tensor pair. Conversly, Theorem 5.20 shows that \(\mathbb Z_2\)-braided tensor pairs give rise to \(\mathbb Z_2 \mathbb D_2\)-algebras. The paper ends in Section~6 with a treaty on the \((\infty,1)\)-categorical aspects of \(\mathbb Z_2 \mathbb D_2\). These are used in Theorem~6.14 to show that the maps of Proposition 5.19 and Theorem 5.20 are mutually inverse to each other.