Fusion and braiding in finite and affine Temperley-Lieb categories

TL;DR

This paper explores the asymptotic representation theory of finite and affine Temperley-Lieb algebras using braided monoidal categories, revealing new structures at roots of unity and establishing connections to the Virasoro algebra.

Contribution

It constructs and analyzes the direct-limit categories of TL algebras, introduces a novel fusion concept for affine TL modules, and relates these categories to Virasoro algebra representations.

Findings

The direct-limit category for finite TL algebras is abelian and braided at any q.

At roots of unity, the categories are non-semisimple and not rigid.

New fusion rules for affine TL algebras are stable and form an associative tensor category.

Abstract

Finite Temperley-Lieb (TL) algebras are diagram-algebra quotients of (the group algebra of) the famous Artin's braid group $B_N$, while the affine TL algebras arise as diagram algebras from a generalized version of the braid group. We study asymptotic `$N\to\infty$' representation theory of these quotients (parametrized by $q\in\mathbb{C}^{\times}$) from a perspective of braided monoidal categories. Using certain idempotent subalgebras in the finite and affine algebras, we construct infinite `arc' towers of the diagram algebras and the corresponding direct system of representation categories, with terms labeled by $N\in\mathbb{N}$. The corresponding direct-limit category is our main object of studies. For the case of the finite TL algebras, we prove that the direct-limit category is abelian and highest-weight at any $q$ and endowed with braided monoidal structure. The most interesting result is when $q$ is a root of unity where the representation theory is non-semisimple. The resulting braided monoidal categories we obtain at different roots of unity are new and interestingly they are not rigid. We observe then a fundamental relation of these categories to a certain representation category of the Virasoro algebra and give a conjecture on the existence of a braided monoidal equivalence between the categories. This should have powerful applications to the study of the `continuum' limit of critical statistical mechanics systems based on the TL algebra. We also introduce a novel class of embeddings for the affine Temperley-Lieb algebras and related new concept of fusion or bilinear $\mathbb{N}$-graded tensor product of modules for these algebras. We prove that the fusion rules are stable with the index $N$ of the tower and prove that the corresponding direct-limit category is endowed with an associative tensor product. We also study the braiding properties of this affine TL fusion.