Categorical centers and Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants (Q2390669)

For every spherical category \(\mathcal{C}\), one can define the Turaev-Viro invariant \(\text{TV}_\mathcal{C}\) of 3-manifolds. Müger showed that the center \(\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})\) of \(\mathcal{C}\) is (sometimes) a modular category. Turaev conjectured that \[ \text{TV}_\mathcal{C}(M) = \text{RT}_{\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})}(M) \] for every 3-manifold \(M\), where \(\text{RT}_{\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})}\) is the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariant of 3-manifolds associated to \(\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})\). The main objective of the paper under review is to propose an approach that may lead to a proof of Turaev's conjecture. The difficulty in proving Turaev's conjecture is that, according to the authors, the description of the simple objects in \(\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})\) is not available. So it is impossible to calculate \(\text{RT}_{\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})}\) using Reshetikhin and Turaev's original definition of the invariant. There is an alternative way to compute \(\text{RT}_{\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})}\), due to Lyubashenko, which utilizes the coend \(C\) of \(\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})\). The authors showed (cited but not proved in the paper under review) that the Hopf algebraic structure in \(C\) can be expressed using only the morphisms in category \(\mathcal{C}\). Therefore one can calculate \(\text{RT}_{\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})}\) without referring to the simple objects in \(\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})\). The authors believe that this algorithm of computing \(\text{RT}_{\mathcal{Z}(\mathcal{C})}\) may be used to prove Turaev's conjecture.