Integrability from categorification and the 2-Kac-Moody Algebra

The theory of Lie bialgebras and the classical Yang-Baxter equation plays a major role in the study of 1+1d integrable systems; many families of integrable systems can be recovered from a Lax pair which is constructed from a Lie bialgebra.

A categorified, higher homotopy notion of Lie algebras has been studied, which gave rise to the notion of (strict) Lie 2-bialgebras (Lie algebra crossed-modules) and the 2-graded Yang-Baxter equations.

In this paper, we use these differential graded structures to generalize the construction of a Lax pair and introduce an appropriate notion of higher-dimensional integrability.

Within this framework, we introduce a higher derived version of the affine Kac-Moody algebra, which underpins the 2-graded Lax integrability that we have developed here as a zero 2-curvature condition.

As an explicit demonstration, we will consider a 3d field theory and show that it (i) is 2-graded Lax integrable and (ii) hosts symmetries governed by a Kac-Moody 2-algebra.