Cohomological Hall algebras and their representations via torsion pairs

Abstract: In this paper, we provide a way of attaching to a torsion pair $(T,F)$ on the heart of a stable $\infty$-category $C$ a cohomological (K-theoretical, categorified) Hall algebra and corresponding left and right representations. More precisely, the algebra is associated to the torsion part, while the representation is associated to the torsion-free part. The left and right actions enable us to construct canonical subalgebras of the endomorphism ring of the Borel-Moore homology and K-theory of the moduli stack of torsion-free objects, whose "positive parts" recover the cohomological Hall algebra and the K-theoretical Hall algebra associated to the torsion part $T$, respectively. This provides a new direction that might lead to overcome the long-standing limitation of the theory of cohomological Hall algebras to just produce "positive parts" of whole algebras. We also provide a geometric sufficient criterion ensuring the vanishing of the commutator between two different operators. In the quiver case, we obtain the action of the two-dimensional cohomological Hall algebra of a quiver on the cohomology of Nakajima quiver varieties within our framework. Besides the quiver case, we also apply our framework to two torsion pairs on a smooth projective complex surface, and we investigate the corresponding Hall algebras and their representations associated to them. Finally, we slightly modify our method to construct representations of the cohomological Hall algebra of zero-dimensional sheaves on $S$ on the Borel-Moore homology of the moduli spaces of Pandharipande-Thomas stable pairs on surfaces and on relative Hilbert schemes of points (and we obtain similar results at the level of K-theory and bounded derived category).