Tensor ideals of abelian type and quantum groups

Abstract

We initiate a study of tensor ideals in linear rigid monoidal categories that are kernels of linear monoidal functors to abelian monoidal categories. We develop general methods and apply them to the category of tilting modules over quantum groups as well as to some representation categories of finite groups. In an appendix on Duflo involutions in monoidal categories, we make a connection between Duflo involutions in the affine Weyl group and tensor ideals for quantum groups, and prove some of Lusztig's conjectures for arbitrary Coxeter groups, at equal parameters, without invoking the boundedness hypothesis.