The center of the asymptotic Hecke category and unipotent character sheaves

Liam Rogel, Ulrich Thiel

Published 2023-07-14Version 1

In 2015, Lusztig [Bull. Inst. Math. Acad. Sin. (N.S.)10(2015), no.1, 1-72] showed that for a connected reductive group over an algebraic closure of a finite field the associated (geometric) Hecke category admits a truncation in a two-sided Kazhdan--Lusztig cell, making it a categorification of the asymptotic algebra (J-ring), and that the categorical center of this "asymptotic Hecke category" is equivalent to the category of unipotent character sheaves supported in the cell. Subsequently, Lusztig noted that an asymptotic Hecke category can be constructed for any finite Coxeter group using Soergel bimodules. Lusztig conjectured that the centers of these categories are modular tensor categories (which was then proven by Elias and Williamson) and that for non-crystallographic finite Coxeter groups the S-matrices coincide with the Fourier matrices that were constructed in the 1990s by Lusztig, Malle, and Brou\'e--Malle. If the conjecture is true, the centers may be considered as categories of "unipotent character sheaves" for non-crystallographic finite Coxeter groups. In this paper, we show that the conjecture is true for dihedral groups and for some (we cannot resolve all) cells of H3 and H4. The key ingredient is the method of H-reduction and the identification of the (reduced) asymptotic Hecke category with known categories whose center is already known as well. We conclude by studying the asymptotic Hecke category and its center for some infinite Coxeter groups with a finite cell.