A Higgs category for the cluster variety of triples of flags

Abstract: The cluster variety of triples of flags (associated with a split simple Lie group of Dynkin type Delta) plays a key role in higher Teichmuller theory as developed by Fock-Goncharov, Jiarui Fei, Ian Le, ... and Goncharov-Shen. We refer to it as the basic triangle associated with Delta. In this paper, for simply laced Delta, we construct and study a Higgs category (in the sense of Yilin Wu) which we expect to categorify the basic triangle. This category is a certain exact dg category (in the sense of Xiaofa Chen) which is Frobenius and stably 2-Calabi-Yau. We show that it has indeed the expected cyclic group symmetry and that its derived category has the expected braid group symmetry. A key ingredient in our construction is a conjecture by Merlin Christ, whose proof occupies most of this paper. The proof is based on a new description of the Higgs category in terms of Gorenstein projective dg modules. Our techniques are in the spirit of Orlov in his work on triangulated categories of graded B-branes.