A Mackey-functor theoretic interpretation of biset functors (Q904027)

This paper gives an analog of Dress' definition of a Mackey functor in the context of biset functors, over a commutative ring \(R\) of coefficients. Recall that in Dress' definition, if \(G\) is finite group, a \(G\)-set can be regarded as a parallel array of subgroups of \(G\) by taking stabilizers, and a homomorphism of \(G\)-sets corresponds to a parallel array of inclusions of subgroups. In the case of biset functors, the author defines a category \({\mathcal{C}}\) whose objects are pairs \((G,X)\) of where \(X\) is a finite \(G\)-set. By taking stabilizers, an object \((G,X)\) can be regarded as a parallel array of finite groups, and a morphism in \({\mathcal{C}}\) is then a parallel array of group homomorphisms between them, up to some conjugates. The problem is that \({\mathcal{C}}\) does not have strict fibered products, therefore the author introduces a \(2\)-category \({\mathbb S}\) with invertible \(2\)-cells, which recovers \({\mathcal{C}}\) as the category \({\mathbb S}/2\)-cells defined as follows. The objects of \({\mathbb S}/2\mathit{-cells}\) are the \(0\)-cells in \({\mathbb S}\); the \(1\)-cells \(\alpha , \beta : X\to Y\) in \({\mathbb S}\) are equivalent if and only if there exists a \(2\)-cell \(\varepsilon: \alpha \Rightarrow\beta\) in \({\mathbb S}\); for \(X,Y\in Ob({\mathbb S}/2\mathit{-cells})\), the morphism set \(({\mathbb S}/2\mathit{-cells})(X, Y)\) is the set of the above equivalence classes; the composition and the identities are induced from the horizontal composition and the identity 1-cells in \({\mathbb S}\). Then \({\mathbb S}\) admits bicoproducts and bipullbacks, so there are `Mackey functor' on \({\mathbb S}\). Biset functors correspond to a special kind of Mackey functors on \({\mathbb S}\), called deflative Mackey functors. The main result of the paper establishes an equivalence between the category of deflative \(R\)-Mackey functors on \({\mathbb S}\) and the category of \(R\)-linear biset functors.