Annular representations of free product categories (Q784880)

This paper has an interesting structural result on the annular representations of the free product of rigid $C^*$-tensor categories $C$ and~$ D$. The two categories $C$ and $D$ do not intersect in their free product, so at most one category can have a homologically non-trivial annular action in the annular tangle of the free product category. The positivity of the annular representation of the free product always reduces to that of $C$ and/or~$ D$. There are three cases depending on the boundary word $W$ of the lowest weight vectors: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] When $W$ is empty, both type $C$ and type $D$ homologically non-trivial annular tangles can act on the lowest weight vectors, but they generate orthogonal modules. The positivity of the annular representation is equivalent to the positivity of all submodules. So the positivity of the annular representation holds for the free product if and only if it holds for both $C$ and~$ D$. \item[2.] When $W$ is a word in one category $C$ (or~$ D$), the annular representation of the free product reduces to that of $C$ (or~$ D$). \item[3.] When $W$ is a word with letters in both categories, the annular action has to be homologically trivial. The positivity of an annular representation of the free product category reduces to the positivity of the free product category itself, which always holds. So all words appear with a freedom of the rotation eigenvalue. \end{itemize}