Minimal nondegenerate extensions

We prove that every slightly degenerate braided fusion category admits a minimal nondegenerate extension. As a corollary, every pseudounitary super modular tensor category admits a minimal modular extension. This completes the program of characterizing minimal nondegenerate extensions of braided fusion categories. Our proof relies on the new subject of fusion 2-categories. We study in detail the Drinfel’d centre Z(Mod-B) of the fusion 2-category Mod-B of module categories of a braided fusion 1-category B. We show that minimal nondegenerate extensions of B correspond to certain trivializations of Z(Mod-B). In the slightly degenerate case, such trivializations are obstructed by a class in H(K(Z2, 2);k×) and we use a numerical invariant — defined by evaluating a certain two-dimensional topological field theory on a Klein bottle — to prove that this obstruction always vanishes. Along the way, we develop techniques to explicitly compute in braided fusion 2categories which we expect will be of independent interest. In addition to the known model of Z(Mod-B) in terms of braided B-module categories, we introduce a new computationally useful model in terms of certain algebra objects in B. We construct an S-matrix pairing for any braided fusion 2-category, and show that it is nondegenerate for Z(Mod-B). As a corollary, we identify components of Z(Mod-B) with blocks in the annular category of B and with the homomorphisms from the Grothendieck ring of the Müger centre of B to the ground field.