Fusion categories and homotopy theory

Abstract

We apply the yoga of classical homotopy theory to classification problems of G -extensions of fusion and braided fusion categories, where G is a finite group. Namely, we reduce such problems to classification (up to homotopy) of maps from BG to classifying spaces of certain higher groupoids. In particular, to every fusion category \mathcal C we attach the 3-groupoid \underline{\underline{\mathrm{BrPic}}}(\mathcal C) of invertible \mathcal C -bimodule categories, called the Brauer–Picard groupoid of \mathcal C , such that equivalence classes of G -extensions of \mathcal C are in bijection with homotopy classes of maps from BG to the classifying space of \underline{\underline{\mathrm{BrPic}}}(\mathcal C) . This gives rise to an explicit description of both the obstructions to existence of extensions and the data parametrizing them; we work these out both topologically and algebraically. One of the central results of the article is that the 2-truncation of \underline{\underline{\mathrm{BrPic}}}(\mathcal C) is canonically equivalent to the 2-groupoid of braided auto-equivalences of the Drinfeld center \mathcal Z(\mathcal C) of \mathcal C . In particular, this implies that the Brauer–Picard group \mathrm{BrPic}(\mathcal C) (i.e., the group of equivalence classes of invertible \mathcal C -bimodule categories) is naturally isomorphic to the group of braided auto-equivalences of \mathcal Z(\mathcal C) . Thus, if \mathcal C = \mathrm{Vec}_A , where A is a finite abelian group, then \mathrm{BrPic}(\mathcal C) is the orthogonal group \mathrm{O}(A \oplus A^*) . This allows one to obtain a rather explicit classification of extensions in this case; in particular, in the case G = \mathbb Z_2 , we re-derive (without computations) the classical result of Tambara and Yamagami. Moreover, we explicitly describe the category of all (\mathrm{Vec}_{A_1},\mathrm{Vec}_{A_2}) -bimodule categories (not necessarily invertible ones) by showing that it is equivalent to the hyperbolic part of the category of Lagrangian correspondences.