Frobenius–Schur indicators and exponents of spherical categories

Abstract

We obtain two formulae for the higher Frobenius–Schur indicators: one for a spherical fusion category in terms of the twist of its center and the other one for a modular tensor category in terms of its twist. The first one is a categorical generalization of an analogous result by Kashina, Sommerhäuser, and Zhu for Hopf algebras, and the second one extends Bantay's 2nd indicator formula for a conformal field theory to higher degrees. These formulae imply the sequence of higher indicators of an object in these categories is periodic. We define the notion of Frobenius–Schur (FS-)exponent of a pivotal category to be the global period of all these sequences of higher indicators, and we prove that the FS-exponent of a spherical fusion category is equal to the order of the twist of its center. Consequently, the FS-exponent of a spherical fusion category is a multiple of its exponent, in the sense of Etingof, by a factor not greater than 2. As applications of these results, we prove that the exponent and the dimension of a semisimple quasi-Hopf algebra H have the same prime divisors, which answers two questions of Etingof and Gelaki affirmatively for quasi-Hopf algebras. Moreover, we prove that the FS-exponent of H divides dim ( H ) 4 . In addition, if H is a group-theoretic quasi-Hopf algebra, the FS-exponent of H divides dim ( H ) 2 , and this upper bound is shown to be tight.