ON THE TURAEV-VIRO-OCNEANU INVARIANT OF 3-MANIFOLDS DERIVED FROMTHE E6-SUBFACTOR (Q3146485)

Turaev and Viro have defined a complex-valued invariant for closed 3-manifolds which when extended to compact 3-manifolds satisfies the axioms of a \((2+1)\)-dimensional topological quantum field theory [\textit{V. G. Turaev} and \textit{O. Ya. Viro}, Topology 31, No. 4, 865-902 (1992; Zbl 0779.57009)]. Ocneanu generalized this to provide an invariant of closed 3-manifolds satisfying the axioms of a \((2+1)\)-dimensional topological quantum field theory by using a subfactor with finite index and finite depth [\textit{A. Ocneanu}, in `Subfactors' (Proc. Taniguchi symposium in 1993), Singapore: World Scientific, 39-63 (1994; Zbl 0927.46032)]. In the case of the \(A_{k+1}\)-subfactor, Ocneanu's invariant is known to agree with the \(SU(2)\) level \(k\) Turaev-Viro invariant; for other subfactors, the relationship is unknown. In this paper, the authors study the \(E_6\)-subfactor. A concrete description of the initial data needed to define Ocneanu's invariant was given by \textit{M. Izumi} [Commun. Math. Phys. 155, No. 1, 157-182 (1993; Zbl 0803.46066)]. The authors use this to determine a Verlinde basis associated to the Turaev-Viro-Ocneanu \((2+1)\)-dimensional topological quantum field theory. They compute the invariant for lens spaces. This computation shows that the invariant takes on non-real values and that the invariant is orientation sensitive. This is particularly interesting, since the Turaev-Viro invariant for closed oriented 3-manifolds is real and is orientation-insensitive.