Category-valued traces for bimodule categories: a representation-theoretic realization

Abstract: The category-valued trace assigns to a bimodule category over a linear monoidal category a linear category. It generalizes Drinfeld centers of monoidal categories and the relative Deligne product of bimodule categories. In this article, we study bimodule categories that are given as categories of bicomodules over a Hopf algebra. Our main result is a representation-theoretic realization of the category-valued trace as a category of generalized Hopf bimodules.