Some quasitensor autoequivalences of Drinfeld doubles of finite groups (Q528832)

In the present paper, the author reports on two distinguished classes of tensor-preserving, albeit in general not monoidal, autoequivalences of the category \(^G_G\mathcal{YD}\) of (finite-dimensional) Yetter-Drinfeld (YD) modules over a finite group \(G\). Both operations are related to taking \(r\)-th powers in \(G\) for \(r\) relatively prime to \(\mathsf{exp}(G)\). Since \(^G_G\mathcal{YD}\) is a semisimple category with simple objects parametrized by irreducible representations of centralizers in \(G\) of elements of \(G\) [\textit{N. Andruskiewitsch} and \textit{M. Graña}, Bol. Acad. Nac. Cienc., Córdoba 63, 45--78 (1999; Zbl 1007.17010)], the first class (introduced more generally for the fusion category \({^\Gamma_G\mathcal{M}^{}_G}\) associated with an inclusion \(G\subseteq \Gamma\) of finite groups) is composed of the autoequivalences induced by the action of \(\mathbb{Z}_{\mathsf{exp}(G)}^\times\) on \(^G_G\mathcal{YD}\) given by Galois conjugation of the local characters of these centralizers. Namely, if \(\rho:C_G(g)\to \mathsf{GL}_{\mathbb{C}}(V)\) is an irreducible representation, which we may assume to be defined over a cyclotomic field \(\mathbb{Q}(\zeta)\) in light of [\textit{R. Brauer}, Am. J. Math. 67, 461--471 (1945; Zbl 0061.03901)], and if \(\sigma_r\) is the \(\mathbb{Q}\)-automorphism of \(\mathbb{Q}(\zeta)\) given by \(\sigma_r(\zeta)=\zeta^r\), then the conjugated representation is obtained by taking the same vector space \(V\) but applying \(\sigma_r\) to all the entries of the matrices \(\rho(x)\), for \(x\in C_G(g)\). The second operation is given by raising the degrees of all the homogeneous elements in a YD module to the \(r\)-th power. In light of two formulae for computing higher Frobenius-Schur (FS) indicators previously obtained by the author in [Pac. J. Math. 280, No. 1, 177--201 (2016; Zbl 1332.18013)] and jointly with \textit{S. H. Ng} in [Adv. Math. 211, No. 1, 34--71 (2007; Zbl 1138.16017)], it follows that both equivalences preserve higher FS indicators up to Galois conjugation. We recall that FS indicators on a pivotal category \(\mathcal{C}\) are certain invariants of \(\mathcal{C}\) that generalize the FS indicator for finite groups. One of the author's original motivations was to explain the observation, made by \textit{R. Courter} in her Ph.D. thesis, that many apparently unrelated simple modules of Drinfeld doubles of symmetric groups have identical sets of indicators (Courter termed these I-equivalent representations). This aim has been partially attained since the examined operations account for some of those I-equivalences. Some small examples complete the exposition.