Supercategorification of quantum Kac-Moody algebras. I, II (Q387035)

The two papers reviewed herein are concerned with questions in the study of categorifications of quantized Kac-Moody algebras and their integrable highest weight modules. The goal, going back to I. B. Frenkel, is to construct a category (possibly with additional structure) whose Grothendieck group possesses a given algebraic structure. The original construction of Frenkel was a tensor category whose Grothendieck group is isomorphic to the quantized enveloping algebra \(U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_{2})\) and many more examples are now known. A key example arises in the study of integrable highest weight modules for affine Kac-Moody algebras of type \(A^{(1)}_{n-1}\), where the categorification is provided by finitely generated projective modules for cyclotomic Hecke algebras [\textit{S. Ariki}, J. Math. Kyoto Univ. 36, No. 4, 789--808 (1996; Zbl 0888.20011)]. In this setting, even more is obtained: the projective indecomposable modules correspond to the Kashiwara-Lusztig global basis. Recently, the definition of the Khovanov-Lauda-Rouquier algebras (KLR algebras, also called quiver Hecke algebras) has given a graded version of this result. Here, the first two authors of the present works have proved that the cyclotomic quiver Hecke algebras yield a categorification of the integrable highest weight modules for symmetrizable quantum Kac-Moody algebras [\textit{S.-J. Kang} and \textit{M. Kashiwara}, Invent. Math. 190, No. 3, 699--742 (2012; Zbl 1280.17017)], a result also obtained independently by \textit{B. Webster} [Knot invariants and higher dimensional representation theory. I: Diagrammatic and geometric categorification of tensor products. \url{arxiv:1309.3796}]. The papers at hand are concerned with the extension of the above result to the setting of superalgebras. A superalgebra is a \(\mathbb{Z}_{2}\)-graded algebra and there are natural superalgebra analogues of the above classes of algebra. In particular, \textit{S.-J. Kang}, \textit{M. Kashiwara} and \textit{S. Tsuchioka} have defined quiver Hecke superalgebras [Quiver Hecke superalgebras, J. Reine Angew. Math. (2015), \url{doi:10.1515/crelle-2013-0089}] and the present works' main goal is to understand what these superalgebras categorify. Space prevents us giving detailed statements of the results contained herein but in outline form they are as follows. Part I is concerned with the proof that the quiver Hecke superalgebras and their cyclotomic versions provide a supercategorfication of quantum Kac-Moody algebras and their integrable modules. That is, the (ordinary) module categories for the quiver Hecke superalgebras admit an endofunctor whose square is naturally isomorphic to the identity (so that the module category is a supercategory) and their Grothendieck groups are isomorphic to the negative part of the quantum Kac-Moody algebra. Furthermore the cyclotomic quiver Hecke superalgebras have the same property with respect to the integrable highest weight modules. Part II concerns the categories of supermodules of the aforementioned algebras. Again one has supercategory structures on these and the authors show that the ``fully super'' version of the above results holds. That is, the supercategories of supermodules for quiver Hecke superalgebras and their cyclotomic versions are a supercategorification of quantum Kac-Moody superalgebras and their integrable highest weight modules. We remark that an important technique for both parts is the theory of strong perfect bases, due to [\textit{A. Berenstein} and \textit{D. Kazhdan}, Contemp. Math. 433, 13--88 (2007; Zbl 1154.14035)].