On a Family of Non-Unitarizable Ribbon Categories Institutional Repository Document uri icon

abstract

  • We consider two families of categories. The first is the family of semisimple quotients of H. Andersen's tilting module categories for quantum groups of Lie type $B$ specialized at odd roots of unity. The second consists of categories constructed from a particular family of finite-dimensional quotients of the group algebra of Artin's braid group known as $BMW$-algebras of type $BC$. Our main result is to show that these families coincide as braided tensor categories using a recent theorem of Tuba and Wenzl. The morphism spaces in these categories can be equipped with a Hermitian form, and we are able to show that these categories are never unitary, and no braided tensor category sharing the Grothendieck semiring common to these families is unitarizable.

author list (cited authors)

  • Rowell, E. C.

complete list of authors

  • Rowell, Eric C

publication date

  • March 2004