On the Monoidal Center of Deligne's Category Rep(S_t)

Abstract

We explicitly compute a monoidal subcategory of the monoidal center of Deligne's interpolation category Rep(S_t), for t not necessarily a natural number, and we show that this subcategory is a ribbon category. For t=n, a natural number, there exists a functor onto the braided monoidal category of modules over the Drinfeld double of S_n which is essentially surjective and full. Hence the new ribbon category interpolates the categories of crossed modules over the symmetric groups. As an application, we obtain invariants of framed ribbon links which are polynomials in the interpolating variable t. These polynomials interpolate untwisted Dijkgraaf-Witten invariants of the symmetric groups.