Butterflies. I: Morphisms of 2-group stacks (Q1018414)

2-groups are the categorification of groups. They correspond to crossed modules and also can be considered as group-like monoidal categories. They provide algebraic models for homotopy 2-types, just as groups provide such for homotopy 1-types. As such one is interested in representing the homotopy category of such 2-groups and, more generally, of stacks of 2-groups on a site. Homotopy classes of morphisms of crossed modules do not provide enough to describe all the morphisms one needs and so weak maps are introduced. At the monoidal category level, the weak maps are just the lax monoidal functors between the 2-groups considered as monoidal categories, but one is interested not just in the set of homotopy classes of such weak maps, but in the groupoid of such maps and its homotopy. Butterflies are a particularly neat model for these weak maps which were introduced by the second author [\textit{B. Noohi}, Homology Homotopy Appl. 9, No. 1, 75--106 (2007; Zbl 1221.18002)], which also provide a suitable tool when handling weak maps of 2-group stacks. The paper under review is the first of a series looking at characterisations and interpretations of these and their higher-dimensional analogues. It is a very good and thorough introduction to this theory and its potential applications in algebraic geometry and related areas of algebraic topology and category theory. It is relatively self contained, so provides an excellent framework for a deeper study of the area. (Reviewer's comment: The titles of the sequels make for very interesting reading.)