English

Putting the Brauer back in Brauer-Picard

Quantum Algebra 2026-04-14 v1

Abstract

We establish a 6-term left exact sequence, involving Galois cohomology of the base field K\mathbb K, and the Brauer-Picard groupoid of a fusion category. This generalizes a result of Etingof, Nikshych, and Ostrik to the setting where K\mathbb K is not algebraically closed. Following their example, we use this exact sequence to compute examples of graded extensions of fusion categories over R\mathbb R. Along the way, we establish several structural theorems regarding the duality morphisms for a fusion category as an object in the 4-category of braided tensor categories. The paper ends with a speculative look at a potential higher categorical explanation of the main result.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.10869,
  title  = {Putting the Brauer back in Brauer-Picard},
  author = {Sean Sanford},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.10869},
  year   = {2026}
}