Drinfeld centers for bicategories

  • Ehud Meir

    Department Department of Mathematical Sciences of Mathematical Sciences University of Copenhagen NTNU Norwegian University 2100 Copenhagen Ø of Science and Technology DENMARK 7491 Trondheim
  • Markus Szymik

    NORWAY
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Abstract

We generalize Drinfeld's notion of the center of a tensor category to bicategories. In this generality, we present a spectral sequence to compute the basic invariants of Drinfeld centers: the abelian monoid of isomorphism classes of objects, and the abelian automorphism group of its identity object. There is an associated obstruction theory that explains the difference between the Drinfeld center and the center of the classifying category. For examples, we discuss bicategories of groups and bands, rings and bimodules, as well as fusion categories.

Cite this article

Ehud Meir, Markus Szymik, Drinfeld centers for bicategories. Doc. Math. 20 (2015), pp. 707–735

DOI 10.4171/DM/503