The Skein Category of the Annulus

We construct the skein category S of the annulus and show that it is equivalent to the affine Temperley-Lieb category of Graham and Lehrer. It leads to a skein theoretic description of the extended affine Temperley-Lieb algebras. We construct an endofunctor of S that corresponds, on the level of tangle diagrams, to the insertion of an arc connecting the inner and outer boundary of the annulus. We use it to define and construct towers of extended affine Temperley-Lieb algebra modules. It allows us to construct a tower of modules acting on spaces of link patterns on the punctured disc which play an important role in the study of loop models. In case of trivial Dehn twist we show that the direct sum of the representation spaces of the link pattern tower defines a graded algebra that may be regarded as a relative version of the Roger-Yang skein algebra of arcs and links on the punctured disc. We also describe the link pattern tower in terms of fused extended affine Temperley-Lieb algebra modules.