Anomalies of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mo>(</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mo>)</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math>-dimensional categorical symmetries
Carolyn Zhang, Clay Córdova
Abstract
We present a general approach for detecting when a fusion category symmetry is anomalous, based on the existence of a special kind of Lagrangian algebra of the corresponding Drinfeld center. The Drinfeld center of a fusion category $\mathcal{A}$ describes a $(2+1)$-dimensional topological order whose gapped boundaries enumerate all $(1+1)$-dimensional gapped phases with the fusion category symmetry, which may be spontaneously broken. There always exists a gapped boundary, given by the electric Lagrangian algebra, that describes a phase with $\mathcal{A}$ fully spontaneously broken. The symmetry defects of this boundary can be identified with the objects in $\mathcal{A}$. We observe that if there exists a different gapped boundary, given by a magnetic Lagrangian algebra, then there exists a gapped phase where $\mathcal{A}$ is not spontaneously broken at all, which means that $\mathcal{A}$ is not anomalous. In certain cases, we show that requiring the existence of such a magnetic Lagrangian algebra leads to highly computable obstructions to $\mathcal{A}$ being anomaly free. As an application, we consider the Drinfeld centers of ${\mathbb{Z}}_{N}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{N}$ Tambara-Yamagami fusion categories and recover known results from the study of fiber functors.