We study derived categories arising from quivers with potential associated to a decorated marked surface S_Delta, in the sense taken in a paper by Qiu. We prove two conjectures from Qiu’s paper in which, under a bijection between certain objects in these categories and certain arcs in S, the dimensions of morphisms between these objects equal the intersection numbers between the corresponding arcs.

An important goal in studying the relations between unitary VOAs and conformal nets is to prove the equivalence of their ribbon categories. In this article, we prove this conjecture for many familiar examples. Our main idea is to construct new structures associated to conformal nets: the categorical extensions.

Suppose V^G is the fixed-point vertex operator subalgebra of a compact group G acting on a simple abelian intertwining algebra V. We show that if all irreducible V^G-modules contained in V live in some braided tensor category of V^G-modules, then they generate a tensor subcategory equivalent to the category Rep G of finite-dimensional representations of G, with associativity and braiding isomorphisms modified by the abelian 3-cocycle defining the abelian intertwining algebra structure on V. Additionally, we show that if the fusion rules for the irreducible V^G-modules contained in V agree with the dimensions of spaces of intertwiners among G-modules, then the irreducibles contained in V already generate a braided tensor category of V^G-modules. These results do not require rigidity on any tensor category of V^G-modules and thus apply to many examples where braided tensor category structure is known to exist but rigidity is not known; for example they apply when V^G is C_2-cofinite but not necessarily rational. When V^G is both C_2-cofinite and rational and V is a vertex operator algebra, we use the equivalence between Rep G and the corresponding subcategory of V^G-modules to show that V is also rational. As another application, we show that a certain category of modules for the Virasoro algebra at central charge 1 admits a braided tensor category structure equivalent to Rep SU(2), up to modification by an abelian 3-cocycle.

Let V⊆A be a conformal inclusion of vertex operator algebras and let C be a category of grading-restricted generalized V-modules that admits the vertex algebraic braided tensor category structure of Huang-Lepowsky-Zhang. We give conditions under which C inherits semisimplicity from the category of grading-restricted generalized A-modules in C, and vice versa. The most important condition is that A be a rigid V-module in C with non-zero categorical dimension, that is, we assume the index of V as a subalgebra of A is finite and non-zero. As a consequence, we show that if A is strongly rational, then V is also strongly rational under the following conditions: A contains V as a V-module direct summand, V is C_2-cofinite with a rigid tensor category of modules, and A has non-zero categorical dimension as a V-module. These results are vertex operator algebra interpretations of theorems proved for general commutative algebras in braided tensor categories. We also generalize these results to the case that A is a vertex operator superalgebra.

We relate commutative algebras in braided tensor categories to braid-reversed tensor equivalences, motivated by vertex algebra representation theory. First, for C a braided tensor category, we give a detailed construction of the canonical algebra in C⊠C^rev: if C is semisimple but not necessarily finite or rigid, then ⨁X∈Irr(C) X′⊠X is a commutative algebra, with X′ a representing object for Hom_C(∙⊗_C X,1_C). Conversely, let A=⨁i∈I U_i ⊠ V_i be a simple commutative algebra in U⊠V with U semisimple and rigid but not necessarily finite, and V rigid but not necessarily semisimple. If the unit objects of U and V form a commuting pair in A, we show there is a braid-reversed equivalence between subcategories of U and V sending U_i to (V_i)*. When U and V are module categories for simple vertex operator algebras U and V, we glue U and V along U⊠V via a map τ: Irr(U)→Obj(V) such that τ(U)=V to create A=⨁X∈Irr(U) X′⊗τ(X). Thus under certain conditions, τ extends to a braid-reversed equivalence between U and V if and only if A is a simple conformal vertex algebra extending U⊗V. As examples, we glue Kazhdan-Lusztig categories at generic levels to obtain new vertex algebras extending the tensor product of two affine vertex algebras, and we prove braid-reversed equivalences between certain module categories for affine vertex algebras and W-algebras at admissible levels.