Symmetric self-adjoint Hopf categories and a categorical Heisenberg double

Abstract: Motivated by the work of of A. Zelevinsky on positive self-adjoint Hopf algebras, we define what we call a symmetric self-adjoint Hopf structure for a certain kind of semisimple abelian categories. It is known that every positive self-adjoint Hopf algebra admits a natural action of the associated Heisenberg double. We construct canonical morphisms lifting the relations that define this action on the algebra level and define an object that we call a categorical Heisenberg double that is a natural setting for considering these morphisms. As examples, we exhibit the symmetric self-adjoint Hopf structure on the categories of polynomial functors and equivariant polynomial functors. In the case of the category of polynomial functors we obtain categorification of the Fock space representation of the infinite-dimensional Heisenberg algebra.