The general linear 2-groupoid (Q1719658)

A 2-category \(C\) is a category enriched over the category of small categories. It has three levels of structure: objects, arrows between objects, and arrows between arrows or 2-cells, whose collections are denoted by \(C_0\), \(C_1\), \(C_2\) respectively. The letters \(x,y,\dots\) for objects, \(f,g,\dots\) for arrows, and \(\alpha,\beta,\dots\) for 2-cells are used. The arrows and 2-cells between two fixed objects \(x, y\) form a category \(C(y,x)\) with the vertical compositions of the 2-shells. For each triple \(x,y, z\) there is a composition functor \(C(z,y)\times C(y,x)\rightarrow C(z,x)\) satisfying an interchange rule. The organization of the paper is as follows: Sections 2 and 3 review 2-categories and their nerves. Section 4 introduces the notion of a Lie 2-groupoid and compares with other important ones in the literature. Section 5 constructs the fundamental example of the general linear 2-groupoid. Section 6 explores the combinatorics behind the nerve of 2-categories. Section 7 proves the main theorem, realizing representations up to homotopies as maps, with a discussion of further questions and applications.