We show that for any amenable group \Gamma and any Z\Gamma-module M of type FL with vanishing Euler characteristic, the entropy of the natural \Gamma-action on the Pontryagin dual of M is equal to the L^2-torsion of M. As a particular case, the entropy of the principal algebraic action associated with the module Z\Gamma / Z\Gamma f is equal to the logarithm of the Fuglede-Kadison determinant of f whenever f is a non-zero-divisor in Z\Gamma. This confirms a conjecture of Deninger. As a key step in the proof we provide a general Szeg\H{o}-type approximation theorem for the Fuglede-Kadison determinant on the group von Neumann algebra of an amenable group. As a consequence of the equality between L^2-torsion and entropy, we show that the L^2-torsion of a non-trivial amenable group with finite classifying space vanishes. This was conjectured by Lueck. Finally, we establish a Milnor-Turaev formula for the L^2-torsion of a finite \Delta-acyclic chain complex.

We introduce fusion bialgebras and their duals and systematically study their Fourier analysis. As an application, we discover new efficient analytic obstructions on the unitary categorification of fusion rings. We prove the Hausdorff-Young inequality, uncertainty principles for fusion bialgebras and their duals. We show that the Schur product property, Young's inequality and the sum-set estimate hold for fusion bialgebras, but not always on their duals. If the fusion ring is the Grothendieck ring of a unitary fusion category, then these inequalities hold on the duals. Therefore, these inequalities are analytic obstructions of categorification. We classify simple integral fusion rings of Frobenius type up to rank 8 and of Frobenius-Perron dimension less than 4080. We find 34 ones, 4 of which are group-like and 28 of which can be eliminated by applying the Schur product property on the dual. In general, these inequalities are obstructions to subfactorize fusion bialgebras.

We give a new type of Schur-Weyl duality for the representations of a family of quantum subgroups and their centralizer algebra. We define and classify singly-generated, Yang-Baxter relation planar algebras. We present the skein theoretic construction of a new parameterized planar algebra. We construct infinitely many new subfactors and unitary fusion categories, and compute their trace formula as a closed-form expression, in terms of Young diagrams.