Let W be an extended affine Weyl group. We prove that the minimal length elements W of any conjugacy class W of W satisfy some nice properties, generalizing results of Geck and Pfeiffer [<i>On the irreducible characters of Hecke algebras</i>, Adv. Math. <b>102</b> (1993), 7994] on finite Weyl groups. We also study a special class of conjugacy classes, the straight conjugacy classes. These conjugacy classes are in a natural bijection with the Frobenius-twisted conjugacy classes of some W -adic group and satisfy additional interesting properties. Furthermore, we discuss some applications to the affine Hecke algebra W

We study the functorially finite maximal rigid subcategories in 2-CY triangulated categories and their endomorphism algebras. Cluster tilting subcategories are obviously functorially finite and maximal rigid; we prove that the converse is true if the 2-CY triangulated categories admit a cluster tilting subcategory. As a generalization of a result of Keller and Reiten (2007) [KR], we prove that any functorially finite maximal rigid subcategory is Gorenstein with Gorenstein dimension at most 1. Similar as cluster tilting subcategory, one can mutate maximal rigid subcategories at any indecomposable object. If two maximal rigid objects are reachable via simple mutations, then their endomorphism algebras have the same representation type.

We study the cluster algebras arising from cluster tubes with rank bigger than 1. Cluster tubes are 2−Calabi-Yau triangulated categories which contain no cluster tilting objects, but maximal rigid objects. Fix a certain maximal rigid object T in the cluster tube C_n of rank n. For any indecomposable rigid object M in C_n, we define an analogous X_M of Caldero-Chapton's formula (or Palu's cluster character formula) by using the geometric information of M. We show that X_M,X_{M′} satisfy the mutation formula when M,M′ form an exchange pair, and that X_? : M↦X_M gives a bijection from the set of indecomposable rigid objects in C_n to the set of cluster variables of cluster algebra of type C_{n−1}, which induces a bijection between the set of basic maximal rigid objects in C_n and the set of clusters. This strengths a surprising result proved recently by Buan-Marsh-Vatne that the combinatorics of maximal rigid objects in the cluster tube Cn encode the combinatorics of the cluster algebra of type B_{n−1} since the combinatorics of cluster algebras of type B_{n−1} or of type C_{n−1} are the same by a result of Fomin and Zelevinsky. As a consequence, we give a categorification of cluster algebras of type C.

We show that direct limit completions of vertex tensor categories inherit vertex and braided tensor category structures, under conditions that hold for example for all known Virasoro and affine Lie algebra tensor categories. A consequence is that the theory of vertex operator (super)algebra extensions also applies to infinite-order extensions. As an application, we relate rigid and non-degenerate vertex tensor categories of certain modules for both the affine vertex superalgebra of osp(1|2) and the N=1 super Virasoro algebra to categories of Virasoro algebra modules via certain cosets.

In these notes we collect some results about finite-dimensional representations of $U_{q}(\mathfrak {gl}(1\mid1))$ and related invariants of framed tangles, which are well-known to experts but difficult to find in the literature. In particular, we give an explicit description of the ribbon structure on the category of finite-dimensional $U_{q}(\mathfrak {gl}(1\mid1))$ -representations and we use it to construct the corresponding quantum invariant of framed tangles. We explain in detail why this invariant vanishes on closed links and how one can modify the construction to get a non-zero invariant of framed closed links. Finally we show how to obtain the Alexander polynomial by considering the vector representation of $U_{q}(\mathfrak {gl}(1\mid1))$ .