Excision of Skein Categories and Factorisation Homology

Abstract

We prove that the skein categories of Walker--Johnson-Freyd satisfy excision. This allows us to conclude that skein categories are $k$-linear factorisation homology and taking the free cocompletion of skein categories recovers locally finitely presentable factorisation homology. An application of this is that the skein algebra of a punctured surface related to any quantum group with generic parameter gives a quantisation of the associated character variety.

38 pages, 15 figures