Prime spectra of abelian 2-categories and categorifications of Richardson varieties

Abstract: We describe a general framework for prime, completely prime, semiprime, and primitive ideals of an abelian 2-category. This provides a noncommutative version of Balmer's prime spectrum of a tensor triangulated category. These notions are based on containment conditions in terms of thick subcategories of an abelian category and thick ideals of an abelian 2-category. We prove categorical analogs of the main properties of noncommutative prime spectra. Similar notions, starting with Serre subcategories of an abelian category and Serre ideals of an abelian 2-category, are developed. They are linked to Serre prime spectra of $\mathbb{Z}_+$-rings. As an application, we construct a categorification of the quantized coordinate rings of open Richardson varieties for symmetric Kac-Moody groups, by constructing Serre completely prime ideals of monoidal categories of modules of the KLR algebras, and by taking Serre quotients with respect to them.